• Part of the Liberty Fund Network
  • Liberty Fund
  • Econlib
  • Law & Liberty
  • Adam Smith Works
  • Online Library of Liberty
  • Titles
  • People
  • Collections

Online Library of Liberty The OLL is a curated collection of scholarly works that engage with vital questions of liberty.

Spanning the centuries from Hammurabi to Hume, and collecting material on topics from art and economics to law and political theory, the OLL provides you with a rich variety of texts to explore and consider.

Learn More

Liberty Matters: A Forum for the Discussion of Ideas About Liberty Mikko Tolonen, Mandeville, Hayek, and the Politics of Self-Esteem

Welcome to our October 2020 edition of Liberty Matters. In this essay and discussion forum Mikko Tolonen, Associate Professor of Digital Humanities at the University of Helsinki, discusses the work of Bernard Mandeville, one of the most original thinkers and personalities of the 18th century. Tolonen discusses various aspects of Mandeville’s thought, in particular the insight concerning people’...

Read More

Explore the OLL Collection: Images of Liberty and Power Bach, Music, and Liberty

Among the names engraved on the limestone walls of the Luther's Hymns and Bach's Chorals. We exhibit here some of the melodies from those works. A moving hymn by Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott, was put to Johann Sebastian Bach. The themes of faith and freedom have spoken powerfully to Protestants ever since: ...

Read More

Explore the OLL Collection: Quotations About Liberty and Power Anthony de Jasay on the proliferation of predators and parasites in the modern state (1998)

The political theorist Anthony de Jasay (1925-) believes that interest groups (made up of “predators” and free-riding “parasites”) will continue to proliferate in the modern state given its current structure of incentives:

Read More

Best of the OLL BOLL 9: William Blackstone, “Of the Absolute Rights of Individuals” (1766)

This is part of “The Best of the Online Library of Liberty” which is a collection of some of the most important material in the OLL. This one comes from Sir William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England in which he defines the “absolute rights” which individuals had prior to the existence of the state and which laid the foundation for the traditional rights of Englishmen.

Read More

About OLL | Contact

  • About us
  • Anthologies
  • Bibliographies
  • Biographies
  • Books
  • Exploring Ideas
  • Goodrich Seminar Room
  • Images of Liberty and Power
  • Liberty Matters
  • Quotations about Liberty and Power
  • Reading Lists
  • Selected Readings
  • Timelines

Copyright ©2003 – 2020, Liberty Fund, Inc. All rights reserved.