☰

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 John Locke on Commercial Society (September 2021)

Welcome to our September 2021 edition of Liberty Matters. This month Professor Bas van der Vossen of Chapman University has written an essay on John Locke’s often underappreciated economic thought. Professor van der Vossen notes that Locke’s impact on the political thought of liberal societies cannot be overstated, but this often means that few scholars look at Locke’s thoughts on labor, proper...

Explore the OLL Collection: Images of Liberty and Power Ludwig von Mises on Rationing in WW2

During the war years the Austrian-American free market economist Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) wrote a number of books which criticised government intervention and control of the economy, especially price controls, rationing, policies of economic autarchy, the diversion of labor and other resources to war production, and the financing of the war through loans, confiscation, and inflation. Wh...

Explore the OLL Collection: Quotations About Liberty and Power Lao Tzu discusses how "the great sages" (or wise advisors) protect the interests of the prince and thus "prove to be but guardians in the interest of the great thieves" (600 BC)

The founder of the Taoist tradition of thought, Lao Tzu (600 BC), compares the actions of a petty thief who steals a satchel with those of the great thieves who steal entire kingdoms following the advice of their intellectual advisors, or “sages”: