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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.

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Liberty Matters: A Forum for the Discussion of Ideas About Liberty Liberty and Virtue: Frank Meyer's Fusionism (June 2021)

Welcome to our June 2021 edition of Liberty Matters.  This month Stephanie Slade, managing editor at Reason magazine, has written our lead essay on Frank Meyer. Liberty Fund publishes Meyer’s most widely cited book In Defense of Freedom and related essays which also includes a number of Meyer’s more well known essays.  Meyer was one of the founders, along with William F. Buckley, of National Re...

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Explore the OLL Collection: Quotations About Liberty and Power Magna Carta guaranteed the freemen of the kingdom their liberties forever (1215)

After losing the Battle of Bouvines in northern France in 1214 King John (1166-1216) was forced by his rebellious nobles to recognise a long list of liberties which the monarchy henceforth had to respect. These became known as the “traditional rights of Englishmen”:

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Explore the OLL Collection: Images of Liberty and Power Encyclopedic Liberty and Industry

  This illustrated essay explores some images of "liberty" and "industry" from Diderot’s Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers (Encyclopaedia, or a Systematic Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Crafts) (1751-1772). They have been taken from Liberty Fund’s anthology of articles, Encyclopedic Liberty: Political Articles in the Dictionary of Diderot an...

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Best of the OLL BOLL 39: Adam Smith, “Of the Character of Virtue” (1759)

This is part of “The Best of the Online Library of Liberty” which is a collection of some of the most important material in the OLL. A thematic list with links to HTML versions of the texts is available here. In a section in the Theory of Moral Sentiments Smith discusses the nature of virtue, in particular prudence, justice, and beneficience. He notes that although they are an integral part of ...

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