Negative liberty

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Negative liberty is freedom from interference by other people. Negative liberty is primarily concerned with freedom from external restraint and contrasts with positive liberty (the possession of the power and resources to fulfill one's own potential). The distinction originated with Bentham, was popularized by T. H. Green and Guido De Ruggiero, and is now best known through Isaiah Berlin's 1958 lecture "Two Concepts of Liberty".^[1]