# Quote — Max Barry, Company

> She dabs at her eyes. “Jesus, you nearly killed me.” She takes a deep breath. “Whoo. Okay. Tell me how you justify buying a new pair of shoes.”
>
> “What?”
>
> “When there are starving people in Africa, what kind of person spends two hundred bucks on shoes? See, once you buy into that paradigm, it’s a bottomless pit. You can never feel good about yourself while there’s anybody in the world poor or hungry, which there always is, Jones, and has been since the dawn of time, so you feel guilty and hypocritical all the time. I’m consistent. I admit I don’t care. You want me to reassure you that Alpha is ethical, but I’m not going to do it, because ethics is bullshit. It’s the spin we put on our lives to justify what we do. I say, be big enough to live without rationalizations.”

- Author: [Max Barry](https://www.leafyquotes.com/max-barry.md)
- Book: [Company](https://www.leafyquotes.com/max-barry/company.md)
- Page: 148
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Max_Barry#Company_(2006)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/max-barry/company/she-dabs-at-her

## More from this book

> Senior Management may have been incompetent; it may have been corrupt; it was certainly full of assholes—but they were their incompetent, corrupt assholes.

p. 294 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/max-barry/company/senior-management-may.md)

> “What happened to sticking together? What happened to teamwork?” He gives Holly a dirty look.
>
> “Hey,” Holly says. “You know what Roger told me? He said there’s no such thing as teamwork. It’s a con. The company doesn’t promote teams. If you want to get ahead you have to screw everybody else and look after yourself. Co-workers are competitors. Roger told me the truth: there’s no I in team, but there’s no U, either!”

p. 237 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/max-barry/company/what-happened-to-sticking.md)

> Mona says bravely, “I can’t see how this will work. You can’t abolish Senior Management. Zephyr isn’t a democracy. It’s a corporation.”
>
> “I believe,” Klausman says, “that Jones is advancing the theory that those two concepts are not mutually exclusive.”

p. 289 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/max-barry/company/mona-says-bravely.md)