Liberty

Works to read

• On Free Will (De Libero Arbitrio) by Desiderius Erasmus, 1524
• The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom by Thomas Jefferson, 1777 (enacted 1786)
• Freedom and the Law by Bruno Leoni, 1961
• Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman, 1962
• Paradise Lost by John Milton, 1667; revised 1674 · Great Books
• The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, 1787-1788 · Great Books
• The Virginia Declaration of Rights by George Mason, 1776
• The Social Contract by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1762 · Great Books
• The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, 1776 · Great Books
• Critique of Practical Reason by Immanuel Kant, 1788 · Great Books
• De Monarchia (with R. W. Church's essay on Dante) by Dante Alighieri; R. W. Church, c. 1312-1318
• Selected Sermons and Reformation Treatises by Martin Luther, 1517-1546

Passages

From the texts

• The struggle between Liberty and Authority is the most conspicuous feature in the portions of history with which we are earliest familiar, particularly in that of Greece, Rome, and England.

  — John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

• The liberty of man, in society, is to be under no other legislative power, but that established, by consent, in the commonwealth; nor under the dominion of any will, or restraint of any law, but what that legislative shall enact, according to the trust put in it.

  — John Locke, Second Treatise of Government

Verified quotations

• He only earns his freedom and existence

  — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, Part Two

• no liberty without virtue, no virtue without citizens

  — Jean-Jacques Rousseau, A Discourse on Political Economy

• But though this be a state of liberty, yet it is not a state of licence

  — John Locke, Second Treatise of Government

• Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.

  — John Milton, Areopagitica

• freedom is acquired not by the full possession of the things which are desired, but by removing the desire

  — Epictetus, The Discourses

• The premeditation of death is the premeditation of liberty; he who has learned to die has unlearned to serve

  — Michel de Montaigne, Essays

Passages are verified quotations from the library that use one of these words: liberty, freedom, free. Sentences under “From the texts” are copied word for word from the full texts in this library. Read each in its context on the work's page.