The Scout Slogan: Do a good turn daily
'Kindness and gentleness are great virtues', says an old Spanish proverb. And another says, 'Oblige without regarding whom you oblige,' which means be kind to anyone, great or small, rich or poor.
The great point about a knight was that he was always doing kindnesses or good turns to people. His idea was that everyone must die, but you should make up your mind that before your time comes you will do something good. Therefore do it at once, for you never know when you may be going off.
So, with the Scouts, it has been made one of our promises that we help other people at all times. It does not matter how small that good turn may be, if it only be to help an old woman lift her bundle, or to guide a child across a crowded street, or to put a coin in the poor-box.
Something good ought to be done each day of your life. Remember the knot in your neckerchief and on your scout badge—they are reminders to you to do a Good Turn. And do your Good Turn not only to your friends, but to strangers as well.
---Lord Robert Baden-Powell
Scouting for Boys - 1908
The Scout Motto: Be Prepared
You can smile at the rain if you have pitched your tent properly.
---Lord Robert Baden-Powell
A Scout is trustworthy
Underlying the whole scheme of civilization is the confidence men have in each other, confidence in their integrity, confidence in their honesty, confidence in their future.
---Bourke Cockran
A Scout is ... loyal
So much of what is best in us is bound up in our love of family, that it remains the measure of our stability because it measures our sense of loyalty. All other pacts of love or fear derive from it and are modeled upon it.
---Haniel Long
A Scout is ... helpful
Part sharing, part caring. By helping each other, we help ourselves; not to mention mankind. Be always full of help -- the dying man's last words.
---John Wayne
A Scout is ... kind
That best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love.
---William Wordsworth (1770 - 1850)
A Scout is ... cheerful
Cheerfulness, it would appear, is a matter which depends fully as much on the state of things within, as on the state of things without and around us.
---Charlotte Bronte (1816 - 1855)
To live content with small means, to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion, to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich, to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly, to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart, to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never, in a word to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common, this is to be my symphony.
---William Henry Channing
A Scout is ... thrifty
It is thrifty to prepare today for the wants of tomorrow.
---Aesop (620 BC - 560 BC), The Ant and the Grasshopper
A Scout is ... brave
Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting a particular way...you become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions.
---Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC)
The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value. I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.
---Thomas Paine (1737 - 1809)
Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.
---Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear.
---Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)
The bravest thing you can do when you are not brave is to profess courage and act accordingly.
---Corra Harris
Thanks to the visionary technologist, bon vivant, and renaissance man Patric Savage for collecting these:
Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.
---Francis Bacon, Of Studies
Ohne Hast, aber ohne Rast. Without haste, but without rest.
---Goethe(His motto)
Better good manners than good looks.
---Irish proverb
Even while they teach, men learn.
---Seneca, Letters
Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth.
---Ecclesiastes 11:9
This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.
---Shakespeare, Hamlet I.iii.58
Carpe diem. Seize the day.
---Horace, Odes
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.
---Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948, Article I-
Mix a little foolishness with your serious plans: it's lovely to be silly at the right moment.
---Horace, Odes
Education makes us what we are.
---Helvetius, Discours
Reckoning up is the end of friendship.
---Irish proverb
One look before is better than two looks behind.
---Irish proverb
No one can tell what he is able to do until he tries.
---Irish proverb
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
---Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, from the translation by Edward Fitzgerald
O, what a tangled web we weave When first we practice to deceive.
---Sir Walter Scott, Marmion
La plus grande chose au monde, c'est de savoir etre a soi. The greatest thing in the world is to know how to be one's own.
---Montaigne
Le Coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connait point. The heart has its reasons that reason knows nothing of.
---Pascal, Pensees
Even if you lose all, keep your good name, for if you lose that you are worthless.
---Irish proverb
Put up in a place
where it's easy to see
the cryptic admonishment
T.T.T.
When you feel how depressingly
slowly you climb,
it's well to remember that
Things Take Time.
---Piet Hein
Problems worthy
of attack
prove their worth
by hitting back.
---Piet Hein
Whenever you're called on to make up your mind,
and you're hampered by not having any,
the best way to solve the dilemma, you'll find,
is simply by spinning a penny.
No - not so that chance shall decide the affair
while you're passively standing there moping;
but the moment the penny is up in the air,
you suddenly know what you're hoping.
---Piet Hein
You'll probably find
that it suits your book
to be a bit cleverer
than you look.
Observe that the easiest
method by far
is to look a bit stupider
than you are.
---Piet Hein
Here is a fact
that should help you to fight
a bit longer:
Things that don't act-
ually kill you outright
make you stronger.
---Piet Hein
Living is
a thing you do
now or never -
which do you?
---Piet Hein
An Aggie does not lie, cheat, or steal
or tolerate those who do.
---Texas A&M University Aggie Code of Honor
Never lie, cheat, or steal. Don’t whine, complain, or make excuses.
---The “two sets of threes” taught from an early age to John Wooden (UCLA's great basketball coach) by his father, Joshua Wooden.
Esse quam videri ("To be rather than to seem")
---State motto of North Carolina
It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copybooks, and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are like cavalry charges in a battle - they are strictly limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments.
---Alfred North Whitehead
Christmas is the season for kindling the fire of hospitality in the hall, the genial flame of charity in the heart.
---Washington Irving
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
---George Bernard Shaw
Nothin' could be finer than to be in Carolina in the mornin'...
---Words by Gus Kahn, music by Walter Donaldson, 1922
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
---Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790)
To lengthen thy life, lessen thy meals.
---Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790)
Wish not so much to live long as to live well.
---Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790)
If you would be wealthy, think of saving as well as getting.
---Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790)
Search others for their virtues, thyself for thy vices.
---Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790)
Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that's the stuff life is made of.
---Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790)
Genius without education is like silver in the mine.
---Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790)
He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.
---Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790)
If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are rotten,
either write things worth reading or do things worth the writing.
---Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790)
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
---Robert Frost (1874–1963)
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
---Martin Luther King (1929 - 1968)
We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.
---Martin Luther King (1929 - 1968)
He that won't be counseled can't be helped.
---Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790)
When angry, count 10 before you speak; if very angry, 100.
---Thomas Jefferson
Your body is the baggage you must carry through life. The more excess baggage, the shorter the trip.
---Arnold H. Glasgow
Character is much easier kept than recovered.
---Thomas Paine
Children are our most valuable natural resource.
---Herbert Hoover
The true test of civilization is not the census nor the size of cities nor the crops---no, but the kind of man the country turns out.
---Ralph Waldo Emerson
The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything.
---Edward J. Phelps
It is a man's kindly acts that are remembered of him in the years after his life.
---Ptah-hotep
You do not lead by hitting people over the head---that's assault, not leadership.
---Dwight D. Eisenhower
All except the shallowest living involves tearing up one rough draft after another.
---Msgr. John J. Sullivan
Politeness is artificial good humor; it covers the natural want of it, and ends by rendering habitual a substitute nearly equivalent to the real virtue.
---Thomas Jefferson
Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice.
---Thomas Paine
There is no security on this earth---there is only opportunity.
---General Douglas MacArthur
You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.
---Abraham Lincoln
Human beings are not perfectible. They are improvable.
---Eric Sevareid
Praise is a device for making a man deserve it.
---Franklin P. Jones
Take therefore no thought for the morrow; for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
---Matthew 6:34
Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.
---Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)
Man is the only animal that blushes -- or needs to.
---Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)
It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world, and moral courage so rare.
---Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)
There is nothing difficult about giving up smoking---I've done it hundreds of times myself.
---Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)
When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.
---Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)
If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.
---Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)
The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.
---Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)
The man with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.
---Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)
Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.
---Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)
Always do right. This will gratify some people, and astonish the rest.
---Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)
We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it ... The cat that sits down on a hot stove lid will never sit down on a hot stove lid again --- and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one any more.
---Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)
Do something every day that you don't want to do; this is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain.
---Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)
Among the three or four million cradles now rocking in the land are some which this nation would preserve for ages as sacred things, if we could know which ones they are.
---Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)
All great things are simple, and many can be expressed in single words: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.
---Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965)
Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and
easy,
or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure
the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who
yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given,
he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable
and uncontrollable events.
---Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965)
To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of
years.
To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.
---Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965)
Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak.
Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.
---Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965)
Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried, in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
---Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965)
I judge from your letter that in Venezuela you are teased badly if you are a professor and you say you don't know or are not sure. I am glad that I am not so teased because I am sure of nothing and find myself having to say "I don't know" very often. After all, I was born not knowing and have only had a little time to change that here and there.
---Richard P. Feynman (1918-1988)