☰

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

The Reading Room

The OLL blog explores the fascinating, vital, and often surprising texts and people that fill our library. Come talk in our library!

Explore...

Liberty Matters

The OLL brings people together to debate and discuss important texts and big ideas about liberty.

Explore...

Liberty Matters: A Forum for the Discussion of Ideas About Liberty Why Read the Ancients Today? (November/December 2022)

Why have ancient texts fallen out of favor today? Once read widely- both in homes and schools- texts by "dead white men" are looked upon today with disfavor. Yet some scholars- and readers- insist upon their enduring significance, even when they reflect a time and place foreign to what we know today. For this Liberty Matters, we invited a diverse group of scholars to ponder the question, Wh...

Explore the OLL Collection: Quotations About Liberty and Power Adam Smith on the Butcher, the Brewer, and the Baker

The Scottish moral philosopher Adam Smith (1723–1790) was the author of two books, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776). Among the best-known passages in his works is the following from Book I, Chapter 2 of Wealth of Nations: