Wikiquote
Free repository of quotes hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation
title: "Wikiquote" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["internet-properties-established-in-2003", "multilingual-websites", "quotations", "wikimedia-projects"] description: "Free repository of quotes hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation" topic_path: "general/internet-properties-established-in-2003" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiquote" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0
::summary Free repository of quotes hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation ::
::data[format=table title="Infobox website"]
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| name | Wikiquote |
| logo | [[File:Wikiquote-logo-en.svg |
| screenshot | Wikiquote screenshot 2008.png |
| collapsible | yes |
| caption | Screenshot of the wikiquote.org home page |
| url | |
| commercial | No |
| type | Quotation repository |
| language | Multilingual ( active) |
| registration | Optional |
| owner | Wikimedia Foundation |
| author | Daniel Alston, Brion Vibber and the Wikimedia community |
| launch_date | |
| current_status | Active |
| :: |
| name = Wikiquote | logo = [[File:Wikiquote-logo-en.svg|150px|center|Wikiquote logo]] | screenshot = Wikiquote screenshot 2008.png | collapsible = yes | caption = Screenshot of the wikiquote.org home page | url = | commercial = No | type = Quotation repository | language = Multilingual ( active) | registration = Optional | owner = Wikimedia Foundation | author = Daniel Alston, Brion Vibber and the Wikimedia community | launch_date = | current_status = Active ::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9b/Wiki_Indaba_2023_-WHY_and_how_to_edit_on_Wikiquote-_The_repository_of_human_wisdom.webm" caption="Presentation about Wikiquote during the Wiki Indaba 2023 conference in [[Agadir]], [[Morocco"] ::
Wikiquote is part of a family of wiki-based projects run by the Wikimedia Foundation using MediaWiki software. The project's objective is to collaboratively produce a vast reference of quotations from prominent people, books, films, proverbs, etc. and writings about them. The website aims to be as accurate as possible regarding the provenance and sourcing of the quotations.
Initially, the project operated only in English from July 2003, expanding to include other languages in July 2004. As of , there are active Wikiquote sites for languages comprising a total of articles and recently active editors.
History
::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e7/Wikiquote_growth.png" caption="Growth of the largest eight Wikiquotes until early 2008"] ::
The Wikiquote site originated in 2003. The article creation milestones are taken from WikiStats.
::data[format=table]
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| Temporarily put on the Wolof language Wikipedia (wo.wikipedia.org). | |
| Own subdomain created (quote.wikipedia.org). | |
| Own domain created (wikiquote.org). | |
| New languages added. | |
| English edition reaches 2,000 pages. | |
| Reaches 24 languages. | |
| Reaches 10,000 pages in total. English edition has close to 3,000 pages. | |
| Reaches 34 languages, including one classical (Latin) and one artificial (Esperanto) | |
| English Wikiquote reaches 5,000 pages. | |
| French Wikiquote taken down for legal reasons. | |
| French Wikiquote restarted. | |
| English Wikiquote reaches 10,000 pages. | |
| Reaches 40 languages. | |
| Reaches a total of 100,000 articles among all languages. | |
| Reaches a total of 200,000 articles among all languages. | |
| Introduced in the curriculum of national partnerships between schools and non-profits (Italy) | |
| :: |
Operation
Wikiquote is one of few online quotation collections that provides the opportunity for visitors to contribute and the very few which strive to provide exact sources for each quotation as well as corrections of misattributed quotations. Wikiquote pages are cross-linked to articles about the notable personalities on Wikipedia.
Multi-lingual cooperation
As of , there are Wikiquote sites for languages of which are active and are closed. The active sites have articles and the closed sites have articles. There are registered users of which are recently active.
The top ten Wikiquote language projects by mainspace article count: ::data[format=table]
| No. | Language | ISO | Good | Total | Edits | Admins | Users | Active users | Files |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| } | [} | wikiquote}}: | ](q-wikipedia-rank-by-size) | ||||||
| :: |
For a complete list with totals see Wikimedia Statistics:
Use in experiments
It can be possible to utilise Wikiquote as a text corpus for language experiments.{{cite conference |last1=Buscaldi|first1=D.|last2=Rosso|first2=P.|date=2007 |conference=International Workshop on Fuzzy Logic and Applications|series=Lecture Notes in Computer Science |editor1=Masulli F. |editor2=Mitra S. |editor3=Pasi G. |title=Some Experiments in Humour Recognition Using the Italian Wikiquote Collection|isbn=978-3-540-73399-7 |doi=10.1007/978-3-540-73400-0_58}} The University of Wroclaw team entering Conversational Intelligence Challenge of the 2017 Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS 2017) used Wikiquote to produce a conversational talker module for extraction of rare words.{{cite report|first1=Jan|last1=Chorowski|first2=Adrian|last2=Łancucki|first3=Szymon|last3=Malik |first4=Maciej|last4=Pawlikowski|first5=Paweł|last5=Rychlikowski|first6=Paweł|last6=Zykowski |date=21 May 2018|title=A Talker Ensemble: the University of Wrocław's Entry to the NIPS 2017 Conversational Intelligence Challenge |arxiv=1805.08032v1}} Researchers have used Wikiquote to train language models to detect extremist quotes.
Reception
Wikiquote has been suggested as "a great starting point for a quotation search" with only quotes with sourced citations being available. It is also noted as a source for frequent misquotes and their possible origins.{{cite web|last=Rickson|first=Sharon|date=22 November 2013 |title=How to Research a Quotation|id=On the Web|website=New York Public Library|access-date=10 December 2019|url=https://www.nypl.org/blog/2013/11/22/how-to-research-quotations|url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181018141132/https://www.nypl.org/blog/2013/11/22/how-to-research-quotations|archive-date=18 October 2018}} It can be used for analysis to produce claims such as "Albert Einstein is probably the most quoted figure of our time".{{cite web|last=Robinson|first=Andrew|date=4 December 2019 |url=https://www.historyextra.com/period/20th-century/facts-albert-einstein-life-death-how-did-he-become-famous-quotes-achievements/|title=5 things you (probably) didn't know about Albert Einstein|id=Albert Einstein is probably the most quoted figure of our time|website=History extra - BBC|access-date=12 December 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191205043116/https://www.historyextra.com/period/20th-century/facts-albert-einstein-life-death-how-did-he-become-famous-quotes-achievements/|archive-date=5 December 2019|url-status=live}}
References
References
- [[Wikimedia]]'s [[MediaWiki]] [[:mw:API:Sitematrix. API:Sitematrix]]. Retrieved {{CURRENTMONTHNAME {{CURRENTYEAR from [[:c:Data:Wikipedia statistics/meta.tab. Data:Wikipedia statistics/meta.tab]]
- [[Wikimedia]]'s [[MediaWiki]] [[:mw:API:Siteinfo. API:Siteinfo]]. Retrieved {{CURRENTMONTHNAME {{CURRENTYEAR from [[:c:Data:Wikipedia statistics/data.tab. Data:Wikipedia statistics/data.tab]]
- (February 2011). "Wikis for Dummies". John Wiley & Sons.
- "Wikiquote Statistics - Article count (official)". Wikimedia.
- (2018-01-26). "Protocollo MIUR-Wikimedia". Ministero dell'istruzione, dell'università e della ricerca.
- DeVinney, Gemma. (18 January 2007). "Wikiquote: Another source for quotes on the Web". University of Buffalo.
- Ahsan, Hafsa. (27 January 2007). "It's all about Wikis". [[Dawn (newspaper).
- "Wikiquote Statistics". [[WP:Meta.
- {{cite conference. (30 March 2021). "Predicting the Descent into Extremism and Terrorism". link. [[Institute of Mathematics and its Applications]]
- Rentoul, John. (11 May 2013). "The top ten:Misquotations". Independent Digital News & Media Ltd.
::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::