Top 35 Robert Baden-Powell Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Leave it better than you found it.”

— Robert Baden-Powell

Featured in: Care Quotes, Short Inspiring Quotes, Values Quotes, Personal Responsibility Quotes, Caring Quotes

2. “Try to 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.”

— Robert Baden-Powell

Featured in: Make A Difference Quotes, Changing the World Quotes, Kindness Quotes, Life Is Short Quotes, Purpose Quotes

3. “Leave this world a little better than you found it.”

— Robert Baden-Powell

Featured in: Make A Difference Quotes, Be Kind Quotes, Service Quotes, Legacy Quotes, Duty Quotes

4. “Look wide, and even when you think you are looking wide – look wider still.”

— Robert Baden-Powell

5. “A week of camp life is worth six months of theoretical teaching in the meeting room.”

— Robert Baden-Powell

6. “The most worth-while thing is to try to put happiness into the lives of others.”

— Robert Baden-Powell

7. “Girls should be brought up to be comrades and helpers, not to be dolls. They should take a real and not a visionary share in the welfare of the nation.”

— Robert Baden-Powell

8. “No one can pass through life, any more than he can pass through a bit of country, without leaving tracks behind, and those tracks may often be helpful to those coming after him in finding their way.”

— Robert Baden-Powell

9. “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

10. “The secret of sound education is to get each pupil to learn for himself, instead of instructing him by driving knowledge into him on a stereotyped system.”

— Robert Baden-Powell

11. “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

12. “The patrol system leads each boy to see that he has some individual responsibility for the good of his patrol.”

— Robert Baden-Powell

13. “Yet one more item is needed to complete success, and that is the rendering of service to others in the community. Without this the mere satisfaction of selfish desire does not reach the top notch.”

— Robert Baden-Powell

14. “Sunday is a day of rest. Loafing is not rest.”

— Robert Baden-Powell

15. “Happiness is not mere pleasure not the outcome of wealth. It is the result of active work rather than passive enjoyment of pleasure.”

— Robert Baden-Powell

16. “O God, help me to win, but in thy wisdom if thou willest me not to win, then O God, make me a good loser.”

— Robert Baden-Powell

17. “The secret of getting successful work out of your trained men lies in one nutshell – in the clearness of the instructions they receive.”

— Robert Baden-Powell

18. “Success in training the boy depends largely on the Scoutmaster’s own personal example.”

— Robert Baden-Powell

19. “In a difficult situation one never-failing guide is to ask yourself: “What would Christ have done?” Then do it-as nearly as you can.”

— Robert Baden-Powell

20. “If a man cannot make his point to keen boys in ten minutes, he ought to be shot!”

— Robert Baden-Powell

21. “It is the Patrol System that makes the Troop, and all Scouting for that matter, a real co-operative matter.”

— Robert Baden-Powell

22. “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

23. “Make good scouts of yourselves, become good rifle shots so that if it becomes necessary that you defend your families and your country that you can do it.”

— Robert Baden-Powell

24. “It is risky to order a boy not to do something; it immediately opens to him the adventure of doing it.”

— Robert Baden-Powell

25. “Loyalty is a feature in a boy’s character that inspires boundless hope.”

— Robert Baden-Powell

26. “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

27. “The Scoutmaster teaches boys to play the game by doing so himself.”

— Robert Baden-Powell

28. “I have known lots of millionaires who were not happy men; they had not got all they wanted and therefore had failed to find success in life. A Singalese proverb says: “He who is happy is rich, but it does not follow that he who is rich is happy.” The really rich man is the man who has fewest wants.”

— Robert Baden-Powell

29. “A thing that many young fellows don’t seem to realism at first is that success depends on oneself and not on a kindly fate, nor on the interest of powerful friends.”

— Robert Baden-Powell

30. “As Sir Henry Newbolt sums it up: “The real test of success is whether a life has been a happy one and a happy giving one.””

— Robert Baden-Powell

31. “To get a hold on boys you must be their friend.”

— Robert Baden-Powell

32. “Football is a grand game for developing a lad physically and also morally, for he learns to play with good temper and unselfishness, to play in his place, and to play the game, and these are the best of training for any game of life.”

— Robert Baden-Powell

33. “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

34. “Young men, of course, don’t want to be guided by old back numbers, but at the same time I know that in my own case I gained a lot by studying the characters of the chiefs under whom I served from time to time. Lord Wolseley, for instance, said: “Use your common sense rather than book instructions.””

— Robert Baden-Powell

35. “After forming a cadet corps of boys for assisting as noncombatants during a military campaign in 1900: We then made the discovery that boys, when trusted and relied on, were just as capable and reliable as men.”

— Robert Baden-Powell