Primary quality

“ Under current conditions the only authentic standard must be based, not upon the social influence of the work, but upon its quality; and a standard of this kind, while it falls short of being complete, must always persist as one indispensable condition of final excellence. ”

“ In considering or designing any kind of work the first and most essential condition is the quality of material that has to be used. "You cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear." And what is true materially is true also mentally; the character of a people is the essential basis of all their institutions and government. ”

“ Anything that is somewhat at all may be said to be or to have a quality. But on the other hand we may prefer to use quality specially of those diversities which are developed when wholes are analyzed into terms and relations. And, when we ask if there can be qualities without relations, this distinction becomes important. ”

“ They exhibit a worthy conception of what is involved in qualification for judgment either about the quality of present industrial relations or about the directions in which or the means by which we should seek for change. ”

“ Now what is common to all these three instances? It is obvious that the only thing that can be common to them all is the quality of order, the quality which is the result and creation of the ordering power of man. ”

“ In the same manner, therefore, as a quality is an attribute grounded on the fact that a certain sensation or sensations are produced in us by the object, so an attribute grounded on some fact into which the object enters jointly with another object, is a relation between it and that other object. ”

“ Secondly, to perceive the height of any excellence, it is necessary to have the most exquisite sense of that kind of excellence through all its gradations: to perceive the want of any excellence, it is merely necessary to have a negative or abstract notion of the thing, or perhaps only of the name. Or, in other words, any the most crude and mechanical idea of a given quality is a measure of positive deficiency, whereas none but the most refined idea of the same quality can be a standard of superlative merit. ”

“ It has been made a question whether the denotation of an abstract term may itself be the subject of qualities. Apparently 'weight' may be greater or less, 'government' good or bad, 'vitality' intense or dull. But if every subject is modified by a quality, a quality is also modified by making it the subject of another ”

“ A quality, whether psychical, physical, emotional, or quantitative, is always regarded as something distinct from its substratum; a thing which possesses any quality, consists, therefore, of that quality and a substratum, and should not be called one. ”

“ All these men combine or seek to combine in varying degrees the quality of striving after the ideal, that is, the quality which makes men reformers, and the quality of so striving through practical methods—the quality which makes men efficient. Both qualities{39} are absolutely essential. The absence of either makes the presence of the other worthless or worse. ”

“ We can therefore merely form the general notion of ‘quality’ in such a way as to lead us to seek further for the universal factor of all sensible qualities. Now since the classes of these qualities are altogether disparate,—warm and sweet, for example, having no common element in their content,—such universal factor lies solely in the form which our representation gives to them all. ”

“ In these secondary qualities of the people which mark the special signs of the times, there are many contradictions, quality contending with quality; all by no means balanced into harmonious relations. ”

“ But what analysis can we adopt which shall prove universally satisfactory? If we rank men according to mental, moral or spiritual attributes, one quality is sure to contradict or affect the other, and it is hard to decide which trait is paramount. ”

“ We must have an intellectual quality in all property and in all action, or they are nought. I must have children, I must have events, I must have a social state and history, or my thinking and speaking want body or basis. ”

“ As I grew into young manhood, and went into business, I found on every hand that quantity counted for more than quality. The emphasis was almost always placed on how much work one could do in a day, rather than upon how well the work was done. ”

“ But every subject at some phase of its development should possess, what is for the individual concerned with it, an aesthetic quality. ”

“ And that which men of practical wisdom, either all, or more, or the best of them, would judge, or have judged, to be a greater good, must necessarily be such, either absolutely or in so far as they have judged as men of practical wisdom. The same may be said in regard to everything else; for the nature, quantity, and quality of things are such as would be defined by science and practical wisdom. ”

“ He may possess a well-balanced organization as to temperament and cerebral development, but without the element of delicate quality he will be utterly incapable of those mental processes requiring delicate shades of thought.
Sol Smith Russell—Quality Responsive.
The individual who unites the elements of strong and delicate quality will exhibit both power and fineness. He will be able to display more versatility of talent than the individual possessing the element of strength or delicacy alone. ”

“ If a man is insensibly determining the quality of his work by everything which he is doing; if he is fixing the excellence of its workmanship by the standards he is accepting and the habits he is forming; if he is creating in advance its spiritual content and significance by the quality which his own nature is unconsciously taking on; and if he is determining its quantity and force by the strength, persistence, and steadfastness which he is developing, it is clear that work rests ultimately upon character, and that character conditions work in quality, content, skill, and mass. ”

“ It is, however, in many cases apparent, that this quality is merely relative and comparative; that we pronounce things beautiful because they have something which we agree, for whatever reason, to call beauty, in a greater degree than we have been accustomed to find it in other things of the same kind; and that we transfer the epithet as our knowledge increases, and appropriate it to higher excellence, when higher excellence comes within our view. ”

“ Sometimes the superior quality of these products is contemplated: and sometimes the new or improved appliances by which they are produced. When, again, we speak of moral or intellectual progress, we refer to the state of the individual or people exhibiting it; while, when the progress of Knowledge, of Science, of Art, is commented upon, we have in view certain abstract results of human thought and action. Not only, however, is the current conception of Progress more or less vague, but it is in great measure erroneous. ”

“ We determine quality by a critical inspection of the general contour of the body, its relative size, the adaptation of its parts to each other, the color and grain of the skin, the relative harmony of the features, the relative brightness of the eyes, the color and texture of the hair, the movements of the body, the tone of the voice, and the rapidity of mental process. To determine quality accurately may sometimes require a series of experiments on the individual, and the success of the examiner will of course depend on his own acuteness of perception and judgment. ”

“ The quality appears, in nature, as a modification of the substance, and as it is thus expressed, in language, by a modification of the noun substantive, which denotes that substance, the quality and the subject are, in this case, blended together, if I may say so, in the expression, in the same manner as they appear to be in the object and in the idea. ”

“ The objective mind, it will therefore be seen, is potentially selective, that is to say, the measure of its quality is its capacity to select at will intellectual nourishment from the whole range of humanity and nature, free from the oppression of its psychic environment. ”

“ This additional quality arises under the choices and action of men, just as the ordinary qualities constituting [379] anything a valuable arise under the choices and action of men. But it is an additional quality, distinctly conferred, and vastly important. The valuable chosen as Money was a Service to start with, was constantly rendered as such then and there, and was consequently fitted by qualities already possessed to assume a further and a unique quality, namely, the capacity to measure and express relatively to itself all other valuable Services whatever. ”

“ The one is a perception, the other a quality, and to mistake the quality, not merely for a perception, but for the very perception to which the quality gives rise; and to infer thence that the quality must likewise be in the mind, is an instance as glaring as can well be imagined of that most heinous of logical offences, the confounding of cause with effect. ”

“ It is true that what is commonly meant by difference of quality, in the strict sense, always is a difference of intrinsic nature: two things cannot differ in quality without differing in intrinsic nature ”

“ Though quantity must count for something, even in the comparison of poet with poet, since quantity implies copiousness, and usually implies versatility, quality counts for much more, if the difference in quality be marked, and suffices to abolish the consideration of quantity altogether, if the superiority in respect of quality be sufficiently great. ”

“ As his faculties unfold she adds quality after quality to his list: progressing from hardness and softness to roughness and smoothness, from colour to polish, from simple bodies to composite ones—thus constantly complicating the problem as he gains competence, constantly taxing his attention and memory to a greater extent, constantly maintaining his interest by supplying him with new impressions such as his mind can assimilate, and constantly gratifying him by conquests over such small difficulties as he can master. ”

“ Although the demand for good work is at present limited, the production of good work will inevitably create a demand; and, finally, the value of Quality is always recognized—sooner or later, but inevitably—and whatever “practical” reasons we may hear urged in favour of Quantity, the value of Quality is gaining recognition every day in commerce and even in art, and there or here, sooner or later we shall know that we can afford the best. ”

“ The perfect fitness of means to end, without defect and without excess, constituted its beauty; and its beauty was perceived aesthetically, as a quality inherent in the form, a quality which apart from the practical serviceableness of the contrivance was capable of communicating pleasure. So in general, when the inherent needs of the work give shape to the structure or contrivance, the resulting form is in so far forth beautiful. ”

“ Science has long since demonstrated the fact that every part of the human organization is susceptible to educational development. Quality, like every other modifying condition, is susceptible to development in either direction, and the success attending an effort to develop either strength, delicacy or responsiveness of quality in any given individual, will in all cases be commensurate with the intelligence and vigor of the efforts expended to that end. ”

“ What we need is a better quality of mental product, more capacity to penetrate into the heart and substance of experience, greater responsiveness to good influences, greater ability to judge values, and a more plastic and more freely flowing mental life. ”

“ Scientific Management determines exactly what quality as well as what quantity of work is needed, and the method prescribed is that one not only of lower costs, but which fits the particular need of the particular occasion most accurately.
Workers are kept under pressure for quality, yet the pressure is not irksome, because the worker understands exactly what quality is desired, and what variations from exactness are permitted. ”

“ B. Modern industry is characterised by an ever-growing care for exactitude; as tools get more scientific it is expected that the product shall have fewer hidden faults, and that in use its quality shall be as good as its appearance. ”

“ The quality of skilled work depends mainly on the standard required of the workman. If his judges and patrons belong to the discerning few who, knowing what is excellent, are intolerant of everything which falls short of excellence, the standard required will necessarily be a high one, and the standard required will be the standard attained. ”

“ Those who speak most of progress measure it by quantity and not by quality; ”

“ The common quality of all states of mind would be the quality designated by the word "mental"; and besides this we should have to suppose that each separate person's states of mind have some common characteristic distinguishing them from the states of mind of other people. ”

“ The moment a quality has been distinguished in a fact that fact has been fitted into a class, the class which consists of all the facts in which that quality can be distinguished. Thus, in our original illustration, when you first distinguished warmth, etc., you were beginning to fit your fact into classes: when you perceived warmth you fitted it into the class of warm objects, and it was the same with the other qualities of roughness, size and smell. ”

“ The seventh, and final, "quality" is body or figure, by which he means the fundamental tendency or energy toward expression in actuality and concrete form. The final goal of intelligent purpose is the realization of wisdom, of idea, in actual Nature-forms and life-forms—the incarnation of the spirit. ”

“ The latter method puts a premium upon accumulating information in the form of symbols. Quantity rather than quality of knowledge is emphasized; results that may be exhibited when asked for rather than personal attitude and method are demanded. ”

“ The first such issue is that of quality and how it is measured. Formal higher education has developed a set of quality measures based on a specific relationship between the education provider and the student. ”