Public Domain Reader
The case for liberty, in the words the authors actually wrote.
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Outline
The map.
The book's structure and its key claims, in the author's own quoted words. See the whole shape in minutes.
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Today's idea
Browse all →“POLITICAL POWER, then, I take to be a RIGHT of making laws with penalties of death, and consequently all less penalties, for the regulating and preserving of property, and of employing the force of the community, in the execution of such laws, and in the defence of the commonwealth from foreign injury; and all this only for the public good.”
— John Locke·Second Treatise of Government·1690
The library
Public-domain classics of liberty and sound money.
Leviathan
Thomas Hobbes
What Is Money?
Frédéric Bastiat
That Which Is Seen
Frédéric Bastiat
The Law
Frédéric Bastiat
Walden
Henry David Thoreau
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin
Up From Slavery
Booker T. Washington
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass
Fiat Money Inflation in France
Andrew Dickson White
Civil Disobedience
Henry David Thoreau
The Social Contract
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
No Treason
Lysander Spooner
Second Treatise of Government
John Locke
On Liberty
John Stuart Mill
Common Sense
Thomas Paine
Old books. Free to read.
Every title here was published over a hundred years ago and belongs to all of us. These are the works that built the case for individual liberty, honest money, and self-government — read them in full, for free.
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