Olaudah Equiano
Writer and abolitionist (c. 1745 to 1797), known for most of his life as Gustavus Vassa, who was enslaved in the Americas and bought his freedom in 1766; author of The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano.
Olaudah Equiano did not write this page.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
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Their wordsNumbers of the natives of Eboe now in London might be brought in support of this assertion: for, in regard to complexion, ideas of beauty are wholly relative.
↗The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1789)gutenberg.org 1st of 8 in this piece
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Their wordsThese instances, and a great many more which might be adduced, while they shew how the complexions of the same persons vary in different climates, it is hoped may tend also to remove the prejudice that some conceive against the natives of Africa on account of their colour. Surely the minds of the Spaniards did not change with their complexions!
↗The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1789)gutenberg.org 2nd of 8 in this piece
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Their wordsO, ye nominal Christians! might not an African ask you, learned you this from your God, who says unto you, Do unto all men as you would men should do unto you? Is it not enough that we are torn from our country and friends to toil for your luxury and lust of gain?
↗The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1789)gutenberg.org 3rd of 8 in this piece
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Our reading
The slave trade hardens the people who deal in it; slave dealers are not born worse than other men
Their wordsSuch a tendency has the slave-trade to debauch men's minds, and harden them to every feeling of humanity! For I will not suppose that the dealers in slaves are born worse than other men—No; it is the fatality of this mistaken avarice, that it corrupts the milk of human kindness and turns it into gall.
↗The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1789)gutenberg.org 4th of 8 in this piece
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Their wordsSurely this traffic cannot be good, which spreads like a pestilence, and taints what it touches! which violates that first natural right of mankind, equality and independency, and gives one man a dominion over his fellows which God could never intend!
↗The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1789)gutenberg.org 5th of 8 in this piece
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Their wordsWhen you make men slaves you deprive them of half their virtue, you set them in your own conduct an example of fraud, rapine, and cruelty, and compel them to live with you in a state of war; and yet you complain that they are not honest or faithful!
↗The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1789)gutenberg.org 6th of 8 in this piece
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Their wordsA commercial intercourse with Africa opens an inexhaustible source of wealth to the manufacturing interests of Great Britain, and to all which the slave trade is an objection.
↗The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1789)gutenberg.org 7th of 8 in this piece
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Our reading
Their wordsThe manufacturing interest and the general interests are synonymous. The abolition of slavery would be in reality an universal good.
↗The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1789)gutenberg.org 8th of 8 in this piece
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