A man’s house is his castle.

The proverb asserts the sanctity of the home as a sphere of personal security and autonomy: within one’s dwelling, an individual should be protected from intrusion and arbitrary power. In Anglo-American legal culture the idea became shorthand for limits on state entry and search, helping to frame later arguments about privacy and property rights. Although the quote is often attributed to the American patriot James Otis in connection with colonial resistance to “writs of assistance,” the underlying maxim is older in English common law and is more securely associated with earlier jurists than with Otis specifically.