Link quality carries more weight than quantity. Spend time getting the highest quality links pointing to your site. One of search engine spammers' biggest sales pitches is, "Get millions of links to your site." Don't fall for that arcane, useless pitch.
And what are quality links? Links from sites related to you content. Don't forget the importance of Geo-relevancy in your links. For example if you are a Chiropractor in Seattle, a link to other Chriropractors in Seattle carry much more weight that a link to one in Florida.
Quality links are links from sites in your niche that rank well in google. Your niche could be local - could be subject. Could be both. For the chiropractor in Seattle I would start by looking for local directories in Seattle and submit to the 'health' subcategory. It's not likely that a competing chiropractor is going to link to your site - unless of course you happen to know that person. In that case: do link-swap - you can both actually recommend the other person to your visitors. [In most cases link-swapping isn't a good idea. this is one of the cases where it is]
I agree that it should be quality over quantity...it should be related, trusted, high ranked on SEs...