Linus Pauling — "I am convinced that we can abolish war, and that we must do so if we are to surv…"
I am convinced that we can abolish war, and that we must do so if we are to survive.
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Understanding this quote
What it means
Humanity has both the ability and the obligation to end war permanently — not just manage or limit it. The alternative, Pauling argues, is species extinction. 'Convinced' signals this isn't wishful thinking but a rational conclusion. 'Must' frames abolition not as optional idealism but as a survival requirement. The quote collapses the gap between scientific certainty and moral urgency, treating war as a solvable problem rather than an inevitable feature of human nature.
Relevance to Linus Pauling
Pauling won Nobel Prizes in both Chemistry (1954) and Peace (1962) — the only person to win two unshared Nobels. His chemistry expertise made him acutely aware of nuclear weapons' destructive scale. He co-authored the 1955 Russell-Einstein Manifesto, collected over 11,000 scientist signatures opposing nuclear testing, and was surveilled by the FBI. For Pauling, peace activism wasn't separate from science — it was science applied to humanity's most urgent problem.
The era
Pauling lived through the Cold War's most terrifying decades: the Soviet-American nuclear arms race, atmospheric weapons tests spreading radioactive fallout into food and children's bones, and the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis bringing the world within hours of nuclear exchange. Scientists once celebrated for winning World War II now grappled with having created civilization-ending weapons. Pauling's conviction that abolition was possible emerged directly from this existential dread shared by much of humanity.
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