Welcome to the Online Library of Liberty

The OLL brings books and ideas together so they can converse with each other and with you. We’ve gathered together collections of texts from historical movements and about big ideas that have changed the world to make it easier to allow our texts to “talk” to each other.

Featured Titles

Encyclopedic Liberty: Political Articles in the Dictionary of Diderot and D’Alembert

Denis Diderot (author)

This anthology unites the most significant political writing from the compendium known as The Encyclopedia. It includes eighty-one of the most original, controversial and representative articles on political ideas, practices, and…

Complete Works, vol. 1 The Spirit of Laws

Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu (author)

This is volume 1 from the Complete Works. The Spirit of Laws is Montesquieu’s best known work in which he reflects on the influence of climate on society, the separation of political powers, and the need for checks on a powerful…

The Collected Works of Frédéric Bastiat. Vol. 2: The Law, The State, and Other Political Writings, 1843-1850

Frédéric Bastiat (author)

Volume 2 of a collection of the works of the 19th century French political economist Frédéric Bastiat. This volume contains 19 essays on political theory, including “The State,” “The Law,” and “Property and Plunder.” A detailed…

Harriet Martineau’s Autobiography, vol. 1

Harriet Martineau (author)

Thinking she was close to death Martineau wrote her autobiography in 1855 but lived for another 20 years. She recounts her activities in various mid-19th century reform movements, her struggle to become a professional writer, and her…

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!

VISIT THE BLOG

Rousseau Dissents from the Modern World

By: Walter Donway Dec 18, 2024

“I ask: which of the two, civil or natural life, is more likely to become insufferable to those who live it? We see about us practically no people who do not complain about their existence...[but] has anyone ever heard of a savage man who was living in liberty ever dreaming of complaining about…

Liberty Matters

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

Contrasting Views of Liberty in Hume and Rousseau (November 2024)

By: OLL Editor Nov 12, 2024

David Hume’s skepticism and rigorous empiricism confront Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s idealism and passionate romanticism in this series about their perspectives on liberty. Hume and Rousseau were two of the most notorious and influential thinkers of their time. They were also very briefly friends.

Featured Quotes

Socialism & Interventionism

The moving parts are men, that is, beings capable of learning, reflecting, reasoning, of making errors and of correcting them, and consequently of making the mechanism itself better or worse. They are capable of pain and pleasure,…

Frédéric Bastiat

Full Quote

Taxation

Under the auspices of tyranny the life of the subject is often sported with, and the fruits of his daily toil are consumed in oppressive taxes, that serve to gratify the ambition, avarice, and lusts of his superiors. Every court…

Alexander Hamilton

Full Quote

Food & Drink

Chagrined a little that we have been hitherto able to produce nothing in this way of use to mankind; and the hot weather coming on, when the electrical experiments are not so agreeable, it is proposed to put an end to them for this…

Benjamin Franklin

Full Quote

All People

Quotes by Author

Quotes by Category

References and Guides

Goodrich Seminar Room

In the Goodrich Seminar Room in the Lilly Library at Wabash College, Crawfordsville, Indiana the limestone walls are engraved with the names of the political and legal documents and authors which Pierre Goodrich, the founder of Liberty Fund, believed had most contributed to our understanding of…

Learn More

Washington: Marshall's Life

Montaigne: A Sketch

Chronology: the Life and Times of William Penn

Adam Smith and the Wealth of Nations

Watch the video on our YouTube channel.

Watch the Spanish version of the video on our YouTube channel.

Related Links:

Adam Smith Subject Area: Economics School of Thought: Classical School of Economics Essays on Adam Smith

Our sister site, AdamSmithWorks

Of special note, please see also…

Learn More

Hume, Smith, and Ferguson: Wealth, Commerce, and Corruption

This is a Reading List based upon a Liberty Fund Conference on “Wealth, Commerce, and Corruption in Hume, Smith, and Ferguson.”

Learn More

Homer's Iliad: Liberty and Responsibility

This is a Reading List based upon a Liberty Fund Conference on “Liberty and Responsibility in Homer’s Iliad.”

Learn More

Essays on Key Authors

Learn More

Forgotten Gems

Over the course of time some particularly noteworthy essays, chapters or sections of books are forgotten. This section is an attempt to revive these “forgotten gems”.

Learn More

Socialism: A Study Guide and Reader

Introduction

This Study Guide examines the long-standing clash between Socialism and Marxism, and Classical Liberalism over the past 200 years or so. It provides a brief history of the tradition, some of its main criticisms of the free market, the classical liberalresponse to these criticisms,…

Learn More

The Intellectual Portrait Series: A Conversation with Jacques Barzun

One of our most distinguished contemporary cultural historians, Jacques Barzun reflects on his long academic career and the movement of ideas he helped to shape through his seminal writings on liberal education in America.

Watch the video version on our YouTube channel.

Below are some prompts for…

Learn More