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“What ultimately matters from a religious perspective is not freedom but salvation; what ultimately matters is not to lead a life but to be saved from being alive.”
― Martin Hägglund, This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom

“To be finite means primarily two things: to be dependent on others and to live in relation to death. (4)”
― Martin Hägglund, This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom

“To return to my family house is to be reminded of how my life is dependent on history: both the natural history of evolution and the social history of those who came before me. Who I can be and what I can do is not generated solely by me. My life is dependent on previous generations and on those who took care of me, with all of us in turn dependent on a history of the Earth that so easily could have been different and that might never have brought any of us into being.

Moreover, my life is historical in the sense that it is oriented toward a future that is not given. The worlds of which I am a part, the projects I sustain and that sustain me, can flourish and change in a dynamic way, but they can also break apart, atrophy, and die. The worlds that open up through my family and friends, the project that shape my work and political commitments, carry the promise of my life but also the risk that my life will be shattered or fail to make sense. In a word, both my life and the projects in which I am engaged are finite. (3-4)”
― Martin Hägglund, This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom

“The nihilist is right in thinking that the world _possesses_ no justification and that he himself _is_ nothing. But he forgets that it is up to him to justify the world and to make himself exist validly.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity