Salvation for a race, nation or class must come from within. Freedom is never granted; it is won. Justice is never given; it is exacted.
Interpretation
True freedom and justice must be earned through collective efforts, rather than simply given by external forces.
A. Philip Randolph emphasizes that for any group—be it a race, nation, or class—salvation and progress must originate from their own actions and convictions. Freedom and justice are not passive gifts bestowed upon people; they are hard-won achievements that require struggle and determination to secure. This perspective highlights the importance of self-empowerment and the active pursuit of social justice.
In practice
During a civil rights rally to inspire action and unity among participants.
We must develop huge demonstrations, because the world is used to big dramatic affairs. They think in terms of hundreds of thousands and millions and billions... Billions of dollars are appropriated at the twinkling of an eye. Nothing little counts.
Negroes are in no mood to shoulder guns for democracy abroad while they are denied democracy here at home.
Justice is never given; it is exacted.
Since almost all Negroes are workers, live on wages, and suffer from the high cost of food, clothing and shelter, it is obvious that the Republican and Democratic Parties are opposed to their interests.
Negroes must be free in order to be equal, and they must be equal in order to be free... Men cannot win freedom unless they win equality. They cannot win equality unless they win freedom.
If someone tried to deprive you of your rights, you've got to resist it. You've got to resent it. You've got to fight against it.
The standpoint of the man who relies on religious experience for capturing Reality must always remain individual and incommunicable.
People think about who they are in the stillest hour of the night. I carry this thought, the child's mystery and terror of this thought, I feel this immensity in my soul every second of my life.
Many people despise those who spend their health, strength and money for the salvation of others, and call them mad. And yet it is they who will save many and be saved themselves.
When a man is treated like a beast, he says, 'After all, I'm human.' When he behaves like a beast, he says 'After all, I'm only human.'
I am one who has always been interested only in the edges of the body and the spirit, the outlying regions of the body and the outlying regions of the spirit. The depths hold no interest for me; I leave them to others, for they are shallow, commonplace. What is there, then, at the outer most edge? Nothing, perhaps, save a few ribbons, dangling down into the void.
I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life, I absenteed myself from Christian assemblies.
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