“Quantity has a quality all its own.”

—  Joseph Stalin

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.
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/.
Misattributed
Variant: Quantity is quality.
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

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 28, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Quantity has a quality all its own." by Joseph Stalin?
Joseph Stalin photo
Joseph Stalin 95
General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union 1879–1953

Related quotes

Vanna Bonta photo

“Love is a quality, not a quantity.”

Vanna Bonta (1958–2014) Italian-American writer, poet, inventor, actress, voice artist (1958-2014)

Shades of the World (1985)

“The vulgarity of the myth of modernity is plainly revealed by the preeminence in its mythology of the factors of quantity; to be modern is always to beat the record in some respect. Distinction, therefore, is opposed to modernity as quality is to quantity.”

Charles Baudouin (1893–1963) French-Swiss psychoanalyst

section 15
The Myth of Modernity (1946)

Seneca the Younger photo

“It is quality rather than quantity that matters.”
Non refert quam multos sed quam bonos habeas.

Seneca the Younger (-4–65 BC) Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, and dramatist

Source: Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter XLV: On sophistical argumentation, Line 1

Amy Lee photo

“To me, it's always about quality not quantity.”

Amy Lee (1981) American singer-songwriter and pianist

Lee explaining why she's not releasing her music "too often" in the show small talk

John Buchan photo

“Any large-scale organization must lose some of the merits of its rudimentary beginnings. Quantity will have a coarsening effect on quality.”

John Buchan (1875–1940) British politician

Augustus (1937)

“You can listen to silence, Reuven. I've begun to realize that you can listen to silence and learn from it. It has a quality and dimension all its own.”

Chaim Potok book The Chosen

Danny Saunders to Reuven Malter
Source: The Chosen (1967)

G. I. Gurdjieff photo

“Rest comes not from the quantity but from the quality of sleep.”

G. I. Gurdjieff (1866–1949) influential spiritual teacher, Armenian philosopher, composer and writer

Aphorisms

Johannes Kepler photo

“Wherever there are qualities there are likewise quantities, but not always vice versa.”

Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) German mathematician, astronomer and astrologer

Vol. VIII, p. 47ff.
Joannis Kepleri Astronomi Opera Omnia, ed. Christian Frisch (1858)

Mahatma Gandhi photo

“It is the quality of our work which will please God, not the quantity.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

Related topics