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 Comedies of Aristophanes, 2 vols.

Aristophanes (author)

A two volume collection of the Comedies of Aristophanes. Vol. 1 contains The Archanians, Knights, Clouds, Wasps, Peace, and Birds. Vol. 2 contains Lysistrata, The Thesmophoriazusae, Frogs, Ecclesiazusae, and Plutus.

The Declaration of Independence: A Study on the History of Political Ideas

Carl Lotus Becker (author)

An examination of the political ideas behind the Declaration of Independence. Becker examines the theory of natural rights, the view the colonists had of their place in the British Empire, and the literary qualities of the…

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…

Euclid’s Elements

Euclid (author)

A late 19th century edition of Euclid’s work on geometry for use in English schools.

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!

To Exonerate God, Rousseau Must Make Man Depraved

Professor Alan Kors explains that the young Rousseau did not trust the Paris philosophes. He met with them in the cafes but did not like their deism. He had known and argued with atheists. The philosophes seemed to him to seize upon deism to argue that God did not exist—perhaps created the world,…
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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)

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.
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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

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

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

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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Washington: Marshall's Life

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George Washington

Source: John Marshall's The Life of George Washington. Special Edition for Schools, ed. Robert Faulkner and Paul Carrese (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2000).

FOREWORD

While there are other good biographies of George Washington, some recent, this Life by Chief…

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Montaigne: A Sketch

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Montaigne

Source: Life and Letters of Montaigne with Notes and Index, vol. 10, trans. Charles Cotton, revised by William Carew Hazlett (New York: Edwin C. Hill, 1910).

SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF MONTAIGNE BY WILLIAM CAREW HAZLETT

THE AUTHOR of the Essays was born, as he informs us…

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Chronology: the Life and Times of William Penn

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William Penn Collections: Political Theory Collections: Religious Toleration

Source: In The Political Writings of William Penn, introduction and annotations by Andrew R. Murphy (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2002).

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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.

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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…

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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.”

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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.”

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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”.

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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,…

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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…
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