Baden Powell Wood Badge Quotes

After Natalie [Wood] and I got back from our honeymoon, I began The Hunters, with Robert Mitchum, directed by Dick Powell. I adored both of them. Powell was one of the great guys of all time, and Mitchum and I became fast friends. He insisted that I call him "Mother Mitchum." One day we cooked up a juvenile practical joke - we hired a girl to sit on a bench at lunchtime without any underpants on. We were in Arizona, at an Air Force base, and from the reaction you'd have thought the men of the United States Air Force had never seen a woman's private parts before. As word spread, we gradually brought the entire base to a halt. The fact that it was juvenile didn't make it any less funny; actually, it made it funnier. ~ Robert Wagner

It is important to arrange games and competition so that all Scouts of the troop take part. ~ Baden Powell De Aquino

Your natural inclination is to preach and to warn other travellers of snags in the path, but isn't it better to signal to them some of the joys by the way which they might otherwise miss? ~ Robert Baden-Powell

Scouting is a man's job cut down to a boy's size. ~ Baden Powell De Aquino

Jay took out his guitar. He was decent at it, but the piano was his best talent. He couldn't get a certain riff right, so he handed the instrument to Kaidan, and my heart flipped.
I recalled him saying he played guitar, but I'd never actually seen or heard him play. Kaidan began to pick at each string, testing and tuning with his full attention. I watched the way his hands moved across the wood and strings, gently, reverently, his body seeming to curl around it as if it were a part of him. . . . I felt my hands getting sweaty, because watching Kaidan get lost in music did crazy things to me. My breathing became ragged and I couldn't take my eyes off him.
He looked up at that moment and caught me staring hard. He knew. He knew what it did to me! I could tell because his badge expanded.
He angled himself away from the others and signed to me, I want to be alone with you tonight.
Patti did have a lot of guests staying in the house. I signed back, I'll work on it.
"Excellent," he whispered, a hot grin sliding onto his face. ~ Wendy Higgins

Juvenile crime is not naturally born in the boy, but is largely due either to the spirit of adventure that is in him, to his own stupidity, or to his lack of discipline, according to the nature of the individual. ~ Robert Baden-Powell

The boy is not governed by don't, but is led by do. ~ Baden Powell De Aquino

My belief is that we were put into this world of wonders and beauty with a special ability to appreciate them, in some cases to have the fun of taking a hand in developing them, and also in being able to help other people instead of overreaching them and, through it all, to enjoy life - that is, to be happy. ~ Robert Baden-Powell

The patrol system leads each boy to see that he has some individual responsibility for the good of his patrol. ~ Robert Baden-Powell

You may be rich, but there is one thing you can't afford - that is, if you are a good sort - you can't afford to spend money on your own luxuries while there are people around you wanting the necessaries of life. ~ Robert Baden-Powell

Varied are the ideas of what constitutes "success," e.g. money, position, power, achievement, honours, and the like. But these are not open to every man-nor do they bring what is real success, namely, happiness. ~ Robert Baden-Powell

Look wide, and even when you think you are looking wide - look wider still. ~ Robert Baden-Powell

We should take care, in inculcating patriotism into our boys and girls, that is a patriotism above the narrow sentiment which usually stops at one's country, and thus inspires jealousy and enmity in dealing with others ... Our patriotism should be of the wider, nobler kind which recognises justice and reasonableness in the claims of others and which lead our country into comradeship with ... the other nations of the world. ~ Robert Baden-Powell

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. ~ Robert Baden-Powell

An individual step in character training is to put responsibility on the individual. ~ Robert Baden-Powell

Almost any biography will have its useful suggestions for making life a success, but none better or more unfailing than the biography of Christ. ~ Robert Baden-Powell

The more responsibility the Scoutmaster gives his patrol leaders, the more they will respond. ~ Robert Baden-Powell

Happiness is open to all, since, when you boil it down, it merely consists of contentment with what you have got and doing what you can for other people. ~ Robert Baden-Powell

The most important object in Boy Scout training is to educate, not instruct. ~ Baden Powell De Aquino

Scoutmasters deal with the individual boy rather than with the mass. ~ Baden Powell De Aquino

Boy Scout is not merely to give you fun and adventure but that, like the backwoodsmen, explorers, and frontiersmen whom you are following, you will be fitting yourself to help your country and to be of service to other people who may be in need of help. That is what the best men are out to do. ~ Robert Baden-Powell

True Scouts are the best friends of animals, for from living in the woods and wilds, and practising observation and tracking, they get to know more than other people about the ways and habits of birds and animals, and therefore they understand them and are more in sympathy with them. ~ Robert Baden-Powell

Always do I recall the parting words uttered by my old governor: "My boy, never ... " I won't set 'em down. I disregarded them fool-like and paid, and paid; had I a son I'd hand 'em on and ram 'em home. What fools we be when young. We fancy we be wise, forgetting that the old boys have graduated in the 'varsity of the world, the greatest 'varsity of all, and each day we should learn from they. ~ Robert Baden-Powell

Scouting is not an abstruse or difficult science: rather it is a jolly game if you take it in the right light. In the same time it is educative, and (like Mercy) it is apt to benefit him that giveth as well as him that receives. ~ Robert Baden-Powell

The uniform makes for brotherhood, since when universally adopted it covers up all differences of class and country. ~ Robert Baden-Powell

The most worth-while thing is to try to put happiness into the lives of others. ~ Robert Baden-Powell

Look wide, beyond your immediate surroundings and limits, and you see things in their right proportion. Look above the level of things around you and see a higher aim and possibility to your work. ~ Robert Baden-Powell

The spirit is there in every boy; it has to be discovered and brought to light. ~ Robert Baden-Powell

But the real way to get happiness is by giving out happiness to other people. 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. ~ Baden Powell

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. ~ Robert Baden-Powell

If it were not for the depressing heat and the urgency of the work, one could sit down and laugh to tears at the absurdity of the thing, and under the circumstances it is a little wearing. But our motto is the old west coast proverb, Softly, softly, catchee monkey; in other words, don't flurry; patience gains the day. ~ Robert Baden-Powell

The Good Turn will educate the boy out of the groove of selfishness. ~ Baden Powell De Aquino

We are not a club or a Sunday school class, but a school of the woods. ~ Baden Powell De Aquino

The object of the patrol method is not so much saving the Scoutmaster trouble as to give responsibility to the boy. ~ Baden Powell De Aquino

When is there a boy, even in these materialistic times, to whom the call of the wild and the open road does not appeal? Maybe it is the primitive instinct, anyway it is there. With that key a great door may be unlocked, if it is only to admit fresh air and sunshine into lives that were otherwise grey.
The heroes of the wild, the frontiersmen and explorers, the rovers of the seas, the airmen of the clouds, are pied pipers to the boys. Where they lead the boys will follow and these will dance to their tune when it sings the song of manliness and pluck, of adventure and high endeavors of efficiency and skill, of cheerful sacrifice of self for others. There's meat in this for the boy. There's soul in it. ~ Baden-Powell Robert Baden-Powell

A boy is not a sitting-down animal. ~ Baden Powell De Aquino

Commemorative stone in the floor of the Chapel of St. George in Westminster Abbey, London, dedicated in 1947: TO THE MEMORY OF ROBERT Baden-Powell CHIEF SCOUT OF THE WORLD 1857-1941 Upon one side of the stone was the badge of the Boy Scouts, the arrow-head to point the true way as it had pointed the way for sailors and navigators from the time of the earliest maps; and on the other the badge of the Girl Guides-the three-leafed clover. ~ Robert Baden-Powell

A Scout smiles and whistles under all circumstances. ~ Robert Baden-Powell