“ If the rational, scientific, progressive principles win out in this struggle there is a possibility of a warless, golden age ahead for mankind. If the reactionary principles of despotism triumph now and in the future, the future history of mankind will repeat the sad story of war and oppression as in the past. ”

“ By the same reasoning, there will rise again a civilization of even vaster promise standing upon our shoulders, as we have stood upon the shoulders of ancient Sumer, Egypt, Greece, and Rome. The learned among that culture of the future may study with pleasure and profit things now in existence which are unique to our time, growing out of our circumstances, needs, and desires. ”

“ Among you too the spirit will fare badly—it should never fare too well on this earth, otherwise men would need it no longer. That optimistic conception of the future is a projection into time of an endeavor which does not belong to the temporal world, the endeavor on the part of man to approximate to his idea of himself, the humanization of man. What we, in this year of Our Lord 1938, understand by the term "culture"—a notion held in small esteem today by certain nations of the western world—is simply this endeavor. ”

“ Believing, as have the people of each age, that our women are the most beautiful, most intelligent, and best groomed of all the ages, we have enclosed in the Time Capsule specimens of modern cosmetics, and one of the singular clothing creations of our time, a woman's hat.
That the pronunciation of our English tongue may not be lost, a "Key to English" has been prepared and printed in this book. That our vocabulary may not be forgotten, we have included in the Capsule a dictionary, defining more than 140,000 common words and phrases. ”

“ However, the production and distribution of commodities is entirely unorganized so that everybody must live in fear of being eliminated from the economic cycle, in this way suffering for the want of everything. Furthermore, people living in different countries kill each other at irregular time intervals, so that also for this reason any one who thinks about the future must live in fear and terror. ”

“ We have made metals our slaves, and learned to change their characteristics to our needs. We speak to one another along a network of wires and radiations that enmesh the globe, and hear one another thousands of miles away as clearly as though the distance were only a few feet. ”

“ There are included samples and specimens of the new materials of our time, created in the laboratories of our engineers and chemists, on the looms of our mills, and in the forges, furnaces, and vats of our factories.
There are also samples of the products of our farms, where machinery has turned scarcity into abundance; where research has produced plants never seen in nature; where science now is able to produce plants even without soil. ”

“ Whether we shall be able to transmit such a segment of our time into the future depends not only on our ingenuity at selection and preservation, on the excellence of engineering, metallurgy, chemistry, and other intellectual disciplines, but also in large measure on those who come after us, and their willingness to cooperate in such an archaeological venture across the reaches of time. ”

“ Einstein's message in authorised English translation:
OUR time is rich in inventive minds, the inventions of which could facilitate our lives considerably. We are crossing the seas by power and utilize power also in order to relieve humanity from all tiring muscular work. We have learned to fly and we are able to send messages and news without any difficulty over the entire world through electric waves. ”

“ WE know now that the idea of the future as a "better world" was a fallacy of the doctrine of progress. The hopes we center on you, citizens of the future, are in no way exaggerated. In broad outline, you will actually resemble us very much as we resemble those who lived a thousand, or five thousand, years ago. ”

“ Over wires pour cataracts of invisible electric power, tamed and harnessed to light our homes, cook our food, cool and clean our air, operate the machines of our homes & factories, lighten the burdens of our daily labor, reach out and capture the voices and music of the air, & work a major part of all the complex magic of our day. ”

“ Five thousand years ago, during a period of invention, development, and science rivaling that of our day, recorded history began. It would be pleasant to believe that we might leave records of our own day for five thousand years hence; to a day when the peoples of the world will think of us standing at history's midpoint. ”

“ THOUGH in all probability methods more sensitive than any we have today will be employed in the future to seek for metallic bodies beneath the earth, it is possible, too, that this will become a lost art. ”

“ If electrical instruments similar to those of our time are used to locate the Capsule, it should be indicated by the distortion of a magnetic field, the increased conductivity of the soil, or other such indications. Certain steps have been taken to increase the Time Capsule's responsiveness in this respect. The soil in which the Time Capsule is buried is fairly homogeneous, and though there are scraps of metals, mostly ferrous, buried in it, these should all have disappeared by corrosion before many centuries have passed. ”

“ THE present English has thirty-three sounds. It is plain that the pronunciation cannot be transmitted to the people of the far future by traditional inherited spelling with its enormous irregularities. It is equally clear that if peculiar symbols be given to some of these thirty-three sounds, it will be bothersome for typewriter & newspaper equipment which has only the twenty-six letters. The letter j therefore is used instead of the inverted e, which last would require a special type, and digraphs, & in two instances trigraphs, are used instead of special vowel and consonant letters. ”

“ We have described the offices and the factories where we work, the machines that write, compute, tabulate, reproduce manuscript a thousandfold, sort out, and file; the machines that stamp and fashion metals; the machines and methods with which metals are knit together by electricity and cut apart by gas; the complex techniques of mass production, with which articles that consist of scores of different materials, requiring hundreds of operations to assemble, can nevertheless be sold among us for a few cents. ”

“ The lines of observation should cross the first line every five feet. Observe the position of maximum current in the pickup coil. In an undisturbed field the coil should stand vertically. As the metallic body is approached the position of maximum current in the pickup will stand at an angle from the vertical, and its plane will point roughly to the buried metallic mass. When it passes over the Capsule, the plane of maximum current of the pickup coil will again become vertical. As the coil passes beyond, it will reverse & point in the opposite direction. ”

“ The English language spoken in the United States today, if not replaced by some other natural or invented tongue, will have suffered complete reforming many times over through the laws of linguistic evolving—laws which though proceeding in regular paths will, because of their complexity, work the apparent result of radical havoc. ”

“ Our experience with artificial materials is too short to give us certain knowledge of their ability to withstand the corrosive effects of thousands of years, yet the older mineral materials, including stone and glass, are too brittle and too difficult to work, are liable to breakage from pressure or earthquake, and are too difficult to detect when buried in the earth. ”

“ Some means should be provided for accurately measuring the strike or direction of the coil in the horizontal plane, as well as its dip or deviation from the vertical position. On level ground, where there is nothing to distort the primary field, the current generated in the small, or pickup coil will be at a minimum [that is, produce the least deflection of the galvanometer needle or the least sound in the telephone receiver] when its plane is perpendicular to that of the large coil. Conversely, the maximum current will be observed when the two coils are in the same plane. ”

“ Alles hängt damit zusammen, daß die Intelligenz und Charakter-Bildung der Massen unvergleichlich tiefer steht als die entsprechenden Eigenschaften der wenigen, die für die Gesamtheit Wertvolles hervorbringen. ”

“ English has eight vowels [or sounds whose hemming amounts to mere cavity-shape resonance] and twenty-five consonants [whose hemming amounts to closure, violent restriction, or closure followed by restriction] .
The vowels are all pronounced between the k and the y consonant positions, that is, between the back-of-the-tongue and the middle-of-the-tongue positions. The vowel with highest raised back of the tongue, that is, nearest to the k consonant position, is u; the vowel with the highest raised middle of the tongue, that is, nearest to the y consonant position, is i. ”

“ Should those who recover the Capsule wish to know our appearance, and how we dress, act, and talk, there have been provided two reels of significant and typical scenes of our time, in pictures that move and speak, imprisoned on ribbons of cellulose coated with silver. ”

“ We have decided that the best possible material is a metallic alloy of high corrosion resistance & considerable hardness, of nonferrous nature, and preferably containing a high percentage of copper. Of all the tools used by ancient peoples, those of stone and copper have come down to us from farthest in the past. ”

“ There are also many small articles that we wear or use; that contribute to the pleasure, comfort, safety, convenience, or healthfulness of our lives; articles with which we write, play, groom ourselves, correct our vision, remove our beards, illuminate our homes and work-places, tell time, make pictures, calculate sums, exchange values, protect property, train our children, prepare our food. ”

“ Our scientists have measured the speed of light and compared the distances of the planets, stars, and nebulæ; they have charted the slow evolution of primal protoplasm into man, fathomed the ultimate composition of matter and its relation to energy, transmuted the elements, measured the earth and explored it, harnessed earthquake, electricity, and magnetism to probe what lies be neath our feet ”

“ AT this moment, August 22, 1938, the principles of representative ballot government, such as are represented by the governments of the Anglo-Saxon, French, and Scandinavian countries, are in deadly conflict with the principles of despotism, which up to two centuries ago had controlled the destiny of man throughout practically the whole of recorded history. ”

“ THE geodetic latitude and longitude of the Time Capsule has been determined by the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey by means of precise triangulation measurements from nearby stations of an extensive rigid Federal net comprising more than fifty thousand stations distributed over the United States. The net extends from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, across the entire North American continent, and is included between latitudes 25° and 49° north of the Equator, and longitudes 68° and 125° west from Greenwich, England. ”

“ We have described in text and picture the arts and entertainment of our day; the games we play; the history & development & present attainments of painting, sculpture, music, the theater, motion pictures, and radio. ”

“ One-syllable words may or may not be high and loud, but it makes little difference to the understanding, whereas polysyllabic words are distorted if the highness and loudness are placed on the wrong syllable. ”

“ Adjectives have three degrees of comparison, as in Illustration 6, good being the positive, better indicating that good is excelled as one racer excels another, & best indicating that good is excelled as one racer excels all. ”