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

We never fail when we try to do our duty, we always fail when we neglect to do it.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Look wide, and even when you think you are looking wide - look wider still.

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.

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

A Scout is never taken by surprise; he knows exactly what to do when anything unexpected happens.

Nobody adopts antisocial behaviour unless they fear that they will fail if they remain on the social side of life.

Many men, many styles; what is chess style but the intangible expression of the will to win.

Our role is to imagine products that don't exist and guide them to life.

Marriage simplifies life and complicates the day.

Life cannot be calculated. That's the big mistake our civilization made. We never accepted that randomness is not a mistake in the equation -- it is part of the equation.

That a marriage ends is less than ideal; but all things end under heaven, and if temporality is held to be invalidating, then nothing real succeeds.

Fame was initially this kind of blunt tool that was thrust into my hands very young.

Poetry is a sleep-maker for that which sits up late in us listening for the footfall of the future on to-day's doorstep.

When the Muslims deliver the indictment of the American system, it is not the white man per se that is being doomed.

If you want me you're going to have to come and get me.