There are some charts out there that show some great info on what SEO experts believe the algorithms look at and how much weight they believe is assigned to each. The problem is that no one truly knows except the people who create the algorithms. That aside, quality content is just as important as quality linking. However, you can get ranked either way as was pointed out earlier by Hipcat. Google really does want quality content to show people and it is my belief that they do put more weight on that than on the number of quality backlinks. Backlinks are great, however, lets face the facts that you can have all the quality links you want, but if your content is garbage people will just stop coming eventually. Plus your bounce rate will be so high and fast this leads me to believe it won't go unnoticed. The longer people are on your website the better and the only way to keep them engaged is a great user experience through quality content.