“The quality of a play is the quality of its ideas.”

— George Bernard Shaw

"The Play of Ideas", New Statesman (6 May 1950)
1940s and later

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George Bernard Shaw413

Irish playwright 1856–1950

Charles Eames (1907–1978) American designer, half of duo the Eames

Attributed to Charles Eames in: Georgia Bizios (1998) Architecture Reading Lists and Course Outlines. p. 494

“The quality of ideas seems to play a minor role in mass movement leadership. What counts is the arrogant gesture, the complete disregard of the opinion of others, the singlehanded defiance of the world.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

Source: The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements

“I maintain that education is a prime instrument of national purpose and that the quality of its education is inseparably involved in the quality of the nation.”

Zakir Hussain (politician) (1897–1969) 3rd President of India

Source: Philosophy of Education, p. 86.

“Quantity has a quality all its own.”

Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

No evidence that this phrasing is due to Stalin, and it does not appear in English translations of his philosphical works. Earliest English is found in 1979 in US defense industry, presumably defense consultant Thomas A. Callaghan Jr. The connection of sufficient quantitative change leading to qualitative change is found in Marxist philosophy, by Marx and Engels, drawing from Hegelian philosophy and Ancient Greek philosophy. Marx and Engels are quoted by Stalin, but this formulation appears to be a modern American form; see quantity for details. <br class="br">Stalin may have said that way before World War II, there is evidence in his Russian-language books, for example here http://www.modernlib.ru/books/stalin_iosif_vissarionovich/tom_14/read_16/. <br class="br">Misattributed <br class="br">Variant: Quantity is quality. <br class="br">Source: Re: "Quantity has a quality all its own" source? http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=h-russia&month=1004&week=a&msg=ljEwsM4dMrpmUGVfI7EGqg, Tim Davenport, h-russia https://networks.h-net.org/h-russia, April 5, 2010

“One of the most important elements of Christian religion is the idea that justice is an essential quality of God. Since God is the absolute, his justice must be absolute justice, that is to say, eternal and unchangeable. Only a religion whose deity is supposed to be just can play a role in social life. To attribute justice to the deity in order to make religion applicable to human relations implies a certain tendency of rationalizing something which, by its very nature, is irrational-the transcendental being, the religious authority, and its absolute qualities.”

Hans Kelsen (1881–1973) Austrian lawyer

"The Idea of Justice in the Holy Scriptures", Rivista Juridicade la Universidadde Puerto Rico, Sept., 1952-April, 1953., published in What is Justice? (1957)