- Ludwig von Mises
Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises was a notable economist and a major influence on the modern libertarian movement. He has been called the "uncontested dean of the Austrian School of economics". The Ludwig von Mises Institute is named after him. - Adam Smith
Adam Smith FRSE (baptised June 5 1723 O.S. / June 16 N.S. - July 17, 1790) was a Scottish moral philosopher and a pioneering political economist. He is a major contributor to the modern perception of economics. One of the key figures of the intellectual movement known as the Scottish Enlightenment, he is known primarily as the author of two treatises: "The Theory of Moral Sentiments" (1759), … - Milton Friedman
Milton Friedman (July 31 1912 - November 16 2006) was an American Nobel Laureate economist and public intellectual. An advocate of laissez-faire capitalism, Friedman made major contributions to the fields of macroeconomics, microeconomics, economic history and statistics. In 1976, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for his achievements in the fields of consumption analysis, … - John Locke
John Locke was an English philosopher. Locke is considered the first of the British Empiricists, but is equally important to social contract theory. His ideas had enormous influence on the development of epistemology and political philosophy, and he is widely regarded as one of the most influential Enlightenment thinkers and contributors to liberal theory. His writings influenced Voltaire and Rousseau, many Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, … - Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was the third President of the United States (1801–1809), the principal author of the Declaration of Independence (1776), and one of the most influential Founding Fathers for his promotion of the ideals of Republicanism in the United States. Major events during his presidency include the Louisiana Purchase (1803) and the Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804–1806). - Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine (Thetford, England, 29 January 1737 - 8 June 1809, New York City, USA) was a pamphleteer, revolutionary, radical, and intellectual. Born in Great Britain, he lived in America, having migrated to the American colonies just in time to take part in the American Revolution, mainly as the author of the powerful, widely read pamphlet, "Common Sense" (1776), advocating independence for the American Colonies from the Kingdom of Great Britain. - John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill, (20 May 1806 - 8 May 1873) British philosopher, political economist and Member of Parliament, was an influential liberal thinker of the 19th century. He was an advocate of utilitarianism, the ethical theory that was systemized by his godfather, Jeremy Bentham, but adapted to German romanticism. It is usually suggested that Mill is an advocate of negative liberty. However, this has been contested by many academics, notably Dr. - Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke (January 12, 1729 - July 9, 1797) was an Irish statesman, author, orator, political theorist, and philosopher, who served for many years in the British House of Commons as a member of the Whig party. He is mainly remembered for his support of the American colonies in the dispute with King George III and Great Britain that led to the American Revolution and for his strong opposition to the French Revolution. - Friedrich A. Hayek
At the London School of Economics, Hayek was instrumental in furthering its then-novel "continental" bent and he was highly influential on his junior colleagues (such as John Hicks ) and students (which included Abba Lerner and Nicholas Kaldor ). However, following the appearance of the General Theory by John Maynard Keynes in 1936, Abba Lerner and Nicholas Kaldor , like the rest of the economics profession, were drawn away from Hayek's orbit. - Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer was an English philosopher and prominent classic-liberal political theorist. Spencer developed an all-embracing conception of evolution as the progressive development of the physical world, biological organisms, the human mind, and human culture and societies. The lifelong bachelor contributed to a wide range of subjects, including ethics, metaphysics, religion, politics, rhetoric, biology, sociology, and psychology. - Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862; born David Henry Thoreau) was an American author, naturalist, transcendentalist, tax resister, development critic, and philosopher who is best known for "Walden", a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay, "Civil Disobedience", an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state. - Ralph Raico
Ralph Raico is professor of European history at the State University of New York College at Buffalo. He received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Chicago, Committee on Social Thought, where the head of his dissertation committee was F.A. Hayek. Among Dr. Raico's articles and essays are: "Rethinking Churchill" in The Costs of War, John V. Denson , ed.; "Austrian Economics and Classical Liberalism," in Advances in Austrian Economics , vol. - Henry George
Henry George (September 2, 1839 - October 29, 1897) was an American political economist and the most influential proponent of the "Single Tax" on land. He was the author of "Progress and Poverty", written in 1879. - Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg in East Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia). He is regarded as one of the most influential thinkers of modern Europe and the last major philosopher of the Enlightenment. - Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham - June 6, 1832) was an English jurist, philosopher, and legal and social reformer. He was a political radical and a leading theorist in Anglo-American philosophy of law. He is best known as an early advocate of utilitarianism and animal rights who influenced the development of liberalism. Bentham was one of the most influential utilitarians, partially through his writings but particularly through his students all around the world. - Grover Cleveland
Stephen Grover Cleveland (March 18 1837 - June 24 1908) was the twenty-second and twenty-fourth President of the United States, and the only President to serve two non-consecutive terms (1885-1889 and 1893-1897). He was the only Democrat elected to the Presidency in the era of Republican political domination between 1860 and 1912, after the American Civil War. His admirers praise him for his bedrock honesty, independence, integrity, … - David Ricardo
David Ricardo (18th April, 1772-11th September, 1823), a political economist, is often credited with systematizing economics, and was one of the most influential of the classical economists, along with Thomas Malthus and Adam Smith. He was also a businessman, financier and speculator, and amassed a considerable fortune. - Frédéric Bastiat
Claude Frédéric Bastiat was a French classical liberal theorist, political economist, and member of the French assembly. He is buried at San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome - Richard Epstein
Richard Allen Epstein (born April 17, 1943) is the James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law, the Faculty Director for Curriculum, and the Director, Law and Economics Program at the University of Chicago Law School. He is also an Adjunct Scholar at the Cato Institute, and the Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. Beginning in 2007, he is a visiting professor of law at New York University Law School. - William Graham Sumner
William Graham Sumner (1840-1910), was an American academic and professor at Yale College. For many years he had a reputation as one of the most influential teachers there. He was a polymath with numerous books and essays on American history, economic history, political theory, sociology, and anthropology. His popular essays gave him a wide audience for his "laissez-faire": advocacy of free markets, anti-imperialism, and the gold standard. - Thomas Szasz
Dr. Thomas Stephen Szasz (pronounced /sas/; born April 15, 1920 in Budapest, Hungary) is a psychiatrist and academic. He is Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at the State University of New York Health Science Center in Syracuse, New York. He is a prominent figure in the antipsychiatry movement, a well-known social critic of the moral and scientific foundations of psychiatry, and of the social control aims of medicine in modern society, as well as of scientism. - Richard Cobden
Richard Cobden (June 3, 1804 - April 2, 1865) was a British manufacturer and Radical and Liberal statesman, associated with John Bright in the formation of the Anti-Corn Law League. - Tammy Bruce
Tammy Bruce (born August 19, 1962) is a pro-choice lesbian feminist who hosts "The Tammy Bruce Show," a radio talk show broadcast on over 160 stations in the United States. Bruce describes herself as a classical liberal author and political commentator. "The Tammy Bruce Show" broadcasts three hours a day six days a week, including Saturdays. She is also a political contributor to Fox News Channel. She is described on her website as "an openly homosexual, … - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, poet, and leader of the Transcendentalist movement in the early nineteenth century. - Bruno Leoni
Bruno Leoni was an Italian classical-liberal political philosopher and lawyer. Besides being editor for the political science journal "Il Politico", Leoni was also involved as secretary and later president of the Mont Pelerin Society. He taught at the University of Pavia from 1942 on to his death. A well-known book of him is "Freedom and the Law", published in English in 1961. - Anders Chydenius
Anders Chydenius was the leading classical liberal of Nordic history. Born in Sotkamo (modern day Finland) and having studied under Pehr Kalm at the Royal Academy of Turku (Åbo), Finland (part of Sweden until 1809) Chydenius became a priest, Enlightenment philosopher and member of the Swedish Riksdag of the Estates. In 1765 he published a pamphlet called "The National Gain", in which he proposes ideas of free trade and industry, … - John Bright
John Bright (November 16, 1811 - March 27, 1889), Quaker, was a British Radical and Liberal statesman, associated with Richard Cobden in the formation of the Anti-Corn Law League. He was one of the greatest orators of his generation, and a strong critic of British foreign policy. - Walt Whitman
Walter Whitman was an American poet, essayist, journalist, and humanist. Proclaimed the "greatest of all American poets" by many foreign observers a mere four years after his death, he is viewed as the first urban poet. He was a part of the transition between Transcendentalism and Realism, incorporating both views in his works. His works have been translated into more than twenty-five languages. - Roy Childs
Roy A. Childs, Jr. (April 1, 1949 - May 1992) was an American libertarian essayist and critic. Childs counted among his early influences Ayn Rand, Ludwig von Mises, Rose Wilder Lane, and Robert LeFevre. Childs edited the magazine "Libertarian Review" from 1977 until it folded in 1981. He was also a research fellow and later a policy analyst with the Cato Institute from 1982 to 1984. - Pascal Salin
Pascal Salin is a libertarian French economist, professor at the Université Paris-Dauphine and a specialist in public finance. He is a former president of the Mont Pelerin Society (1994 to 1996). Inspired by classical liberalism and libertarianism, his work follows the traces of Frédéric Bastiat, Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek. Salin is a regular contributor to the libertarian webzine Le Québécois Libre. - Michel Chevalier
Michel Chevalier (January 13, 1806-November 18, 1879) was a French engineer, statesman, economist and free market liberal. - Alexander von Humboldt
(September 14, 1769, Berlin – May 6, 1859, Berlin) was a Prussian naturalist and explorer, and the younger brother of the Prussian minister, philosopher, and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt. Humboldt's quantitative work on botanical geography was foundational to the field of biogeography. Between 1799 and 1804, von Humboldt travelled to Latin America, exploring and describing it from a scientific point of view for the first time. - Amit Varma
Amit Varma is a writer based in Mumbai, India. He has worked in advertising, television and journalism, and has written for such publications as "The Guardian", "The Wall Street Journal" and "Wisden Cricketers' Almanack". He is best known for his blog, India Uncut, which won the "Best Indiblog Award" at the Indibloggies in 2005 and was one of the nominees in 2006. - Boudewijn Bouckaert
Boudewijn Bouckaert is a Belgian liberal thinker and politician, adhering to more radical-liberal views than the vast majority of Flemish liberals. He is chairman of the classical liberal Nova Civitas think tank and a member of List Dedecker. Boudewijn Bouckaert holds a PhD and works as a University Professor at the Law School of the University of Ghent, the University of Paris and the University of Aix-Marseille. - Guy Sorman
Guy Sorman is a French journalist, economist, philosopher and author. He has written many books that preach the ideals of creativity and modern capitalism. One can consider Sorman to be a neoconservative, while he is closer to classical liberalism postulates. He has controversial views about energy; in his book, 'Progress and its enemies,' Sorman writes that there is an infinite, or nearly infinite, supply of fossil fuel, and that, instead of focusing on renewable energy, … - Ernest Benn
Sir Ernest John Pickstone Benn, 2nd Baronet (25 June, 1875 - 17 January, 1954) was a prolific British publicist. He was an uncle of the Labour politician Tony Benn. Benn was born in Oxted, Surrey. As a civil servant in the Ministry of Munitions and Reconstruction during the First World War he came to believe in the benefits of state intervention in the economy. In the mid-1920s, however, he changed his mind and adopted "the principles of undiluted "laissez-faire". - Harold Cox
Harold Cox (Tonbridge, Kent 1859 - 1 May 1936) was a Liberal MP for Preston from 1906 to 1909. The son of a County Court judge, Cox was educated at Tonbridge School in Kent and at Jesus College, Cambridge. He later worked as a lecturer in Political Economy for Cambridge at York and Hull. He also worked as an agricultural labourer in Kent and Surrey for nearly one year in order to discover what life for English labourers was like. He started a communistic farm which failed. - Charles Lane
Charles Lane was an English-American transcendentalist and abolitionist and one of the founders, with Bronson Alcott of Fruitlands. - Oliver Smedley
Major Oliver Smedley MC, (1911-1989) was British citizen involved in classical liberal politics and pirate radio. Smedley was a paratrooper during the Second World War and won the Military Cross at the Battle of Arnhem. In opposition to Clement Attlee's Agriculture Act 1947, Smedley helped to found, and become Secretary of, the Farmer's and Smallholder's Association in 1947. Its first President was the Conservative MP Waldron Smithers. - Hannes Hólmsteinn Gissurarson
Hannes Hólmsteinn Gissurarson is a professor of political theory at the University of Iceland, a frequent commentator on current affairs in the Icelandic media and a well-known, but controversial, spokesman for the free market and for libertarianism or classical liberalism.
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