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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 Reflections on Libraries, Liberty, and Black History (February 2021)

On my office wall there hangs an illustrated quotation from Frederick Douglass: “Once you learn to read you will be forever free.” Libraries--online or off--have always been places where voices have mingled across the lines of centuries, cultures, countries, and races. The interaction of those voices has always, to me, been the sound of freedom. This month, in lieu of our standard Liberty M...

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Explore the OLL Collection: Quotations About Liberty and Power Madame de Staël on how liberty is ancient and despotism is modern (1818)

In her history of the French Revolution Madame Germaine de Staël (née Necker) (1766-1817) makes the important point that it is liberty which is “ancient” and much predated the rise of relatively recent and “modern” despotism, such as Napoléon’s:

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Best of the OLL BOLL 24: Spooner, "Vices are Not Crimes"

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. This is a pamphlet Spooner published in 1875 in which he argued that “vices” should not be punished as crimes. In other words, this is a defense of the right of individuals to engage in so-called “victimless crimes”. Only violence committed against other individu...

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Explore the OLL Collection: Images of Liberty and Power Frederick Douglass and abolition

There are numerous illustrations in the British edition of the Frederick Douglass. They are of three types: pictures of famous abolitionists, Douglass visiting graves and memorials of those who had struggled against slavery, or horror pictures of the treatment of slaves. Here are a selection.   ...

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