A biography for Robert Baden-Powellhasn’t been written yet.
“The uniform makes for brotherhood, since when universally adopted it covers up all differences of class and country.”
“An individual step in character training is to put responsibility on the individual.”
“Erudition - that is, reading, writing, and arithmetic - is taught in the schools; but where is the more important quality, character, taught? Nowhere in particular. There is no authorized training for children in character.”
“One aim of the Boy Scouts scheme is to revive amongst us, if possible, some of the rules of the knights of old.”
“No man is much good unless he believes in God and obeys His laws.”
“Personally, I like reading adventures which really have happened to people, because they show what kind of things might happen to oneself, and they teach one how to 'Be Prepared' to meet them.”
“Trust should be the basis for all our moral training.”
“If you make yourself indispensable to your employer, he is not going to part with you in a hurry no matter what it costs him.”
“The most worth-while thing is to try to put happiness into the lives of others.”
“The Scoutmaster who is a hero to his boys holds a powerful lever to their development but at the same time brings a great responsibility on himself. They are quick enough to see the smallest characteristic about him, whether it be a virtue or a vice.”
“One of the first duties of a Scout is obedience to authority. He must obey his orders in the first place and put his own amusement or desires in the second.”
“One of the finest statesmen of the present time is also a first-class scout, and that is Mr. Roosevelt, the late President of the United States of America.”
“Happiness is within the reach of everyone, rich or poor. Yet comparatively few people are happy. I believe the reason for this is that the majority don't recognize happiness even when it is within their grasp.”
“It always seems to me so odd that when a man dies, he takes out with him all the knowledge that he has got in his lifetime whilst sowing his wild oats or winning successes. And he leaves his sons or younger brothers to go through all the work of learning it over again from their own experience.”
“The Scoutmaster teaches boys to play the game by doing so himself.”
“The best workers, like the happiest livers, look upon their work as a kind of game: the harder they play the more enjoyable it becomes.”
“Living indoors without fresh air quickly poisons the blood and makes people feel tired and seedy when they don't know why. For myself, I sleep out of doors in winter as well as summer. I only feel tired or seedy when I have been indoors a lot. I only catch cold when I sleep in a room.”
“Try and leave this world a little better than you found it, and when your turn comes to die, you can die happy in feeling that at any rate, you have not wasted your time but have done your best.”
“Be Prepared... the meaning of the motto is that a scout must prepare himself by previous thinking out and practicing how to act on any accident or emergency so that he is never taken by surprise.”
“We never fail when we try to do our duty, we always fail when we neglect to do it.”