Where liberty dwells, there is my country.

The line expresses a civic identity grounded not in birthplace or ethnicity but in the presence of political freedom. “Country” becomes a moral and constitutional idea: wherever liberty is protected, that is the place to which one owes allegiance and affection. Read this way, the saying elevates liberty as the primary criterion for patriotism and suggests a cosmopolitan strain in republican thought—one can feel at home under any government that secures rights. It is often invoked to argue that loyalty to a nation is conditional on its safeguarding freedom, and that the defense of liberty is the highest form of national devotion.