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This article has tried to explain the three main strands (liberal internationalism, idealism, neoliberal institutionalism) in the liberal thought and analyzed the national interest understandings of these schools. Liberalism is closely related to the Enlightenment and the rise of the capitalist relations. With the Enlightenment, the individual and reason gained prominence against the metaphysical thought. Liberal internationalism is the classical form of the liberal thought. It gives much importance to free trade and democracy, and claims that if all the states in the world are ruled by democracy and based on market economy, then the wars will be eliminated from the world. So, its aim is to create a community of the liberal democratic states with common interests. The second liberal strand is the idealist school which is more state-centric than the liberal internationalism. With the eruption of the World War I in the first quarter of the XX century, the idealists saw it necessary to regulate the world politics at the state-level. The national self-determination and the foundation of the League of Nations were both evidences of the support given to the nation-state as a legitimate mode of governance in the XX century. The third strand in the liberal thinking is neoliberal institutionalism, which, preoccupied with the international organizations, claims that the world has become interdependent. Thus, seeing the state as the only actor is no longer possible. For the neoliberals who think that anarchy can be mitigated by the creation of international regimes, have aimed to develop a theory of regimes to confirm that cooperation is not only possible under the supervision of hegemony but also in its absence because regimes create common interests for their members. So, the national interest understanding of neoliberal institutionalism depends on a cooperative understanding. Despite of its division, liberalism has mounted a significant challenge to the claim that national interests have ongoing significance in international politics.