The mass is a matrix from which all traditional behavior toward works of art issues today in a new form. Quantity has been transmuted into quality. The greatly increased mass of participants has produced a change in the mode of participation.
Quantity has a quality all its own.
The demon of quantity, who will soon rule the world, is pressing home his attack and fortifying his positions in literary circles as everywhere else.
“Aristocracy,” … taken in its etymological sense, means precisely the power of the elect. The elect, by the very definition of the word, can only be the few, and their power, or rather their authority, being due to their intellectual superiority, has nothing in common with the numerical strength on which democracy is based, a strength whose inherent tendency is to sacrifice the minority to the majority, and therefore quality to quantity and the elect to the masses.
It is the same case with all those pretended syllogistical reasonings, which may be found in every other branch of learning, except the sciences of quantity and number; and these may safely, I think, be pronounced the only proper objects of knowledge and demonstration.
Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.
Our culture, obsessed with numbers, has given us the idea that what we can measure is more important than what we can't measure. Think about that for a minute. It means that we make quantity more important than quality.
We cannot deny the indictment that we seek solution for practically every problem of life in quantitative terms, and are not fully aware of the limits of this approach.
If the quality of society could be replaced by quantity, it would be worth while to live in the world at large; but unfortunately a hundred fools in a crowd still do not produce one intelligent man.
Monotony of evil: never anything new, everything about it is equivalent. ... It is because of this monotony that quantity plays so great a part. A host of women (Don Juan) or of men (Célimène), etc.
The spirit, overcome by the weight of quantity, has no longer any other criterion than efficiency.