It wasn't so much a "quality over quantity" philosophy so much as an "we have no idea what we're doing" philosophy.

The nazi government and economy were an incredible shambles. Each military supplier had its own agenda in conflict with everyone else's, leading to needless duplication of effort--things like 3 or 4 different companies producing their own version of a medium bomber, or light tank, or assault gun, all of which used non-interchangable parts, which made production and logistics an endless wrestling match.

Which product won, or which division got new tanks, was solely at the determination of Hitler, so his subordinates were constantly plotting and backstabbing each other in order to get his favor, and he wasn't particularly stable.

So one day the artillery factory gets full priority for resources, their pick of the laborers, tons and tons of cash, because the guy whose pet project was artillery caught Hitler in a good mood.

The next day, Hitler sees a drawing of a submarine and gets really excited, so all those resources get sent to the submarine factories. And the next day it's this tank. Or that tank. And so on. As you can imagine, this wasn't a particularly efficient system for a nation at war.

Source- Wages of Destruction, Adam Tooze.

Anyways, what most people have in mind when they have this misconception of the nazi military as some super advanced force are tanks and wonder weapons.

Tanks--ironically, when the nazis had their greatest successes, their tanks were smaller and lighter. The panzer 2, and early models 3 and 4 weren't anything special, and some of their opponents were larger, or more advanced.

Case in point of the nazi dysfunction--when the military encountered the Russian t34 tank, which outclassed anything they had, they simply asked for a germanized copy. However, the nazi shitshow turns that request, 2 years later, into the panther tank. A bloated 45 ton "medium" tank with powerful front armor, paper thin armor everywhere else, almost incapable of driving anywhere under its own power without breaking down or lighting itself on fire.

The mighty "tiger" was a hilariously inefficient design, featuring vertical armor plate like it was 1930's vintage night or something, as well as a stupidly large gun that was overkill for typical combat situations. The vertical plate meant that despite being some 20 tons heavier than the m4 Sherman, it had only slightly more "effective thickness" of the frontal plate. It couldn't be mass produced, it guzzled scarce fuel, and frankly, even if it was the best tank ever, in a modern industrial war, there are more important things.

Wonder weapons- Most of these were acts of desperation, ideas that the allies had investigated . The me262 jet fighter was incredibly unreliable, with engines that needed to be replaced after a day of flying, and low velocity cannon, which while powerful, only allowed split seconds of room to engage targets.

The v1 and v2 had almost no military impact whatsoever. The v1 at least required the allied to divert air defense for interception duties, whereas the v2, while impossible to intercept, couldn't reliably hit a city. The v2 program cost more than the US spent on the fricking Manhattan project, which was pretty obviously a more impactful use of resources.

Tl/Dr the nazis were dysfunctional and popular culture spreads a lot of misinformation about their military.

Sources:

Panther vs Sherman, Zaloga Russia's War, Overy Why the Allies Won, Overy