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

The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass: From 1817-1882

Frederick Douglass (author)

Douglass’s third and last autobiography of his life as a slave, runaway, and then campaigner for the abolition of slavery. This edition is interesting because of the introduction by one of Britain’s leading classical liberal…

The Writings of James Madison, 9 vols.

James Madison (author)

A 9 volume collection edited by Gaillard Hunt in 1900-10.

The History of Freedom and Other Essays

John Emerich Edward Dalberg, Lord Acton (author)

Acton never completed his projected History of Liberty. The collection contains two chapters from this planned history - on liberty in antiquity and Christianity - and many book reviews where one can piece together Acton’s approach…

“Are Economists Basically Immoral?” and Other Essays on Economics, Ethics, and Religion

Paul Heyne (author)

Heyne’s writings are unique in that he takes the critics of the free market order seriously and addresses their arguments directly, showing how they are defective in their understanding of economics and in their ethical and…

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!

Walt Whitman Remembers the Ladies

In both poetry and prose Walt Whitman envisions an America in which men and women are seen as equals. In an early draft (1847) of Leaves of Grass he wrote, “I am the poet of women as well as men / The woman is not less than the man.” Those lines did not make it into the first printing (1855), but…
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Liberty Matters

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

Jefferson in Time: Perspectives through His Eyes

Thomas Jefferson was born April 13, 1743 and died on July 4th, 1826. During his 83 years Jefferson saw and brought about dramatic changes in law, slavery, and religious toleration. His efforts were imperfect but he did, throughout his life, attempt to live up to his ideals.
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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

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

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

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…
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Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527)

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Niccolo Machiavelli

Source: The editor's introduction to The Historical, Political, and Diplomatic Writings of Niccolo Machiavelli, tr. from the Italian, by Christian E. Detmold (Boston, J. R. Osgood and company, 1882). Vol. 1. History of Florence.

LIFE of NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI.…
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Voltaire: Incidents in his Life

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Voltaire

Source: The Works of Voltaire. A Contemporary Version. A Critique and Biography by John Morley, notes by Tobias Smollett, trans. William F. Fleming (New York: E.R. DuMont, 1901). In 21 vols. Vol. 1.

  INTRODUCTION BY OLIVER H.G. LEIGH.

 

Voltaire wrote of…

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Chronology: The Life and Work of Edmund Burke

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Edmund Burke Collections: Political Theory

Related Links in the Goodrich Seminar Room:

Edmund Burke

Source: Introduction to Select Works of Edmund Burke. A New Imprint of the Payne Edition. Foreword and Biographical Note by Francis Canavan (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1999).…

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American Anti-Interventionist Tradition: A Bibliographical Essay by Justus Doenecke

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Source: Bibliographical Essay in Literature of Liberty, Summer 1981, vol. 4, No. 2

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Jefferson-Hamilton Debate

This is a Reading List based upon a Liberty Fund Conference on a “Debate between Jefferson and Hamilton”.

  

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Banned Books

 

Many of the works in the Online Library of Liberty have been banned or censored at various times by governments, established churches, and pubic schools for their content. Among these are:

a number of translations of the Bible the Koran the U.S. Constitution

Some famous authors whose…

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52 Quotations about War and Peace

52 QUOTATIONS ABOUT WAR & PEACE
From Liberty Fund's Online Library of Liberty

In 1808 when the war against Napoleon was in full swing the Scottish economist James Mill (1773-1836) denounced the economic impact that higher taxes and restrictions on foreign trade were having on the British…

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Friedrich Hayek

This is a collection of key extracts by, and essays and study guides about Friedrich Hayek (1899-1992).

See also the following works:

Bibliographies: Hayek: A Bibliography of his Writings Bibliographies: Hayek and Classical Liberalism: A Bibliographical Essay by John Gray

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OLL Videos

Explore our complete collection of video at our YouTube channel. 

 

 

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On Being a Conservative Philosopher: Tensions in the Work of Michael Oakeshott

Michael Oakeshott has often been considered to be a conservative philosopher.  This essay will explore what that might mean and highlight some of the tensions between conservatism and philosophy in Oakeshott’s writings.*

October 3, 2024

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