José Martí

“ But in this life, there's always unfortunate ones. And the unfortunate in The Golden Age is the story about The History of the Spoon, the Fork and the Knife, which in each issue, brags and announces itself, as if being a marvel, and then there's no space for it. ”

“ The boy that does not think about what happens around him, and is content with living without knowing if he is living honorably, is like a man that lives off the work of a rascal, and is on the way to becoming a rascal himself. ”

“ That is why The Golden Age is published: so that American boys know how life was lived before, and is lived today, in America and in other lands, and so they know how things are made, like crystal and iron things, steam engines, hanging bridges, and electric light. And in order that when a boy sees a colored rock, he knows why it has those colors, and what each color means, and so that boys are familiar with famous books where stories of battles and religions of ancient peoples are told. ”

“ In the world there must be a certain amount of self-respect, as there must be a certain amount of light. When there are many men without self-respect, there are always others that have within them the self-respect of many men. Those are the ones who revolt with terrible strength against those who steal the liberty of the people, which is the same as stealing their self-respect. In those men are thousands of men, an entire people – human dignity itself. Those men are sacred. These three men are sacred: Bolívar, of Venezuela; San Martín, of Argentina ”

“ Girls can also write us letters, and ask us what they want to know, and send us their compositions for the competition every six months. Surely girls are going to win!
What we want is that children be happy, as the little brothers and sisters of our engraving. If at some point an American child finds us in the world and presses his hand to ours, like an old friend, may he say where all the world can hear, "This man from The Golden Age was my friend!" ”

“ All of America was waking up. A single man is never worth more than an entire people, but there are men that do not tire, when the people tire, and who decide to fight before the people do, because they do not have to consult anyone but themselves, and the people cannot consult with each person so quickly. Those were the merits of Bolívar, that he did not tire of fighting for the liberty of Venezuela, when it seemed that Venezuela was tired. ”

“ This magazine is for boys, and for girls, of course. Without girls we could not live, just like the earth cannot live without light. Boys must work, walk, study, be strong, and be handsome. Boys can be handsome even if they are ugly – a good, intelligent, and neat boy is always handsome. But a boy is never as handsome as when he brings a flower to a girl in his strong, manly little hands, or when he takes his sister's arm, so that no one offends her. Then boys grow, and appear to be giants: boys are born to be gentlemen, and girls to be mothers. ”

“ The good deeds should be done without beckoning the universe to make oneself be seen. One's good just because; and because deep inside, one feels a certain pleasure when one has been good, or has said something useful, to others. ”

“ A man that obeys a bad government, without working to make the government good, is not an honorable man. A man who resigns himself to obey unjust laws, and permits other men to trample and mistreat his homeland, is not an honorable man. The boy, from the time he can think, must think about everything he sees, must suffer for those that cannot live honorably, must work because all men can be honorable, and must be an honorable man. ”

“ When a boy wants to know something that is not in The Golden Age, write to us as if you have always known us, and we will answer you. It doesn't matter if the letter arrives with spelling mistakes. What matters is that the boy wants to learn. And if the letter is well written, we will publish it in our letter with the signature at the bottom, so that it is known that boys are valuable. Boys know more than it seems, and if you told them to write what they know, they would write very good things. ”

“ This is the issue of The Golden Age in which we see the old and the new in the world, and we learn how war- and death-related affairs are not as beautiful as what is achieved through work. Who knows if the times when Father Las Casas lived were better than when the Paris Exposition took place? ”

“ Those are the heroes, those who fight to make people free, or those who suffer in poverty and disgrace for defending a great truth. Those who fight for ambition, to make people their slaves, to increase their power, to remove a people from its lands – they are not heroes, but criminals. ”

“ And we will tell them what is known about the heavens, the depths of the sea, and the earth, and we will tell children's stories, for when they have studied a lot, or played a lot, and want to rest. We work for children, because children are those who know how to love, because children are the hope of the world. And we love that they love us, and see us as something from their hearts. ”

“ It was an army of young men. Never did anyone fight so much, or so well, in all the world, for liberty. Bolívar did not defend the right of men to govern themselves with as much fire as the right of America to be free. ”

“ This magazine is published once a month to converse, like good friends, with the gentlemen and mothers of tomorrow, to tell girls nice stories with which they can entertain their guests and play with their dolls, and to tell boys what they must know to be true men. All that they want to know we are going to tell them, and in a way that they will understand it, with clear words and fine pages. We are going to tell them how the world is made: we are going to tell them all that has been done by men until now. ”

“ And what we need to read, very carefully, is the section about the pavilions of Our America. A regret has The Golden Age: it couldn't find the banner of the pavilion from Ecuador. Sad feels the table when one of the brethren is missing! ”

“ Bolívar died of a heavy heart, more than an ill body, in the house of a Spaniard in Santa Marta. He died poor, and left a family of peoples.
Mexico had valuable women and men that were not many, but were worth much: a half-dozen men and a woman prepared the way of setting their country free. They were a few valiant young people, the husband of a liberal woman, and a sixty-year-old priest of the people who loved the Indians. Ever since he was a child, the priest Hidalgo belonged to the good race: the race of those who want to know. Those that do not want to know are the bad race. ”

“ There are men who are worse than beasts, because beasts need to be free to live happily. The elephant does not want to have babies when it is imprisoned, and the llama of Peru throws itself to the ground and dies when the Indian speaks to it rudely or puts too heavy a load on its back. Men must be at least as respectable as the elephant and llama. In America, before liberty, life was like that of the llama with too heavy a load. ”

“ San Martín was the liberator of the South, the father of the Argentinian Republic, and the father of Chile. His parents were Spanish, and they sent him to Spain to become a soldier of the king. When Napoleon entered Spain with his army, to take liberty away from the Spanish, the Spanish all fought against Napoleon: old men, women, children fought, including one little brave Catalan boy, who made an entire company flee one night, firing shots from a crevice in the mountain. ”

“ The sun has spots. The ungrateful do not talk about anything but the spots. The grateful talk about the light. ”