💬 Wikiquote Quotations Scraper

🚀 Export sourced quotations in seconds. Turn any Wikiquote page into a clean feed of quotes with attribution, section, and source link, one record per quotation.

🕒 Last updated: 2026-06-05 · 📊 8 fields per record · scales to thousands of quotes · 10+ language editions

Wikiquote is the open, community curated companion to Wikipedia dedicated to quotations from notable people, books, films, and topics. This Actor reads a page through the official MediaWiki API, parses the bulleted quote lines under the Quotes sections, strips the wiki markup, and returns each quotation as its own structured record.

Coverage: Pull quotations from any Wikiquote page in English (en) plus nine other language editions including Spanish, German, French, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Polish, Dutch, and Japanese. Each record carries the quote text, the attribution or source note when present, the page title, the section it came from, the language, and a direct link back to the page.

🎯 Target Audience	💡 Primary Use Cases
Writers, journalists, and editors	Sourcing accurate, attributed quotes
Researchers and students	Building citation ready quote collections
App and bot builders	Powering quote of the day feeds
Educators and trivia creators	Compiling themed quotation sets

📋 What the Wikiquote Quotations Scraper does

• Reads one or more Wikiquote pages by title through the MediaWiki action API.
• Detects the quotation sections (Quotes, Sourced, Attributed, Misattributed, and similar) and skips See also, References, and external link blocks.
• Parses each top level bullet as a quote and the indented sub bullets as attribution or source notes.
• Strips wiki markup, reference tags, templates, and citation only lines, leaving readable text.
• Outputs one clean record per quotation, ready for downstream use.
• Supports ten language editions and a configurable item limit.

🎬 Full Demo (🚧 Coming soon)

⚙️ Input

Field	Type	Description
pageTitles	array	One or more Wikiquote page titles, for example Albert Einstein or Mark Twain.
language	string	Wikiquote language edition to query. Defaults to en.
maxItems	integer	Maximum number of quotation records to collect. Free plan caps at 10.

Example, default run:

{
  "pageTitles": ["Albert Einstein", "Mark Twain"],
  "language": "en",
  "maxItems": 10
}

Example, single topic in another language:

{
  "pageTitles": ["Friedrich Nietzsche"],
  "language": "de",
  "maxItems": 50
}

⚠️ Good to Know: Titles must match the Wikiquote page name. Redirects are followed automatically. Pages with no Quotes section return no quotations rather than an error.

📊 Output

Each record represents a single quotation.

Field	Description
📄 pageTitle	The resolved Wikiquote page title the quote came from
💬 quote	The cleaned quotation text
✍ attribution	Source, work, date, or context note when present, otherwise null
🗂 section	The section path the quote was found under
🌐 language	The Wikiquote language edition queried
🔗 sourceUrl	Direct link to the Wikiquote page
🕒 scrapedAt	ISO timestamp of collection
❌ error	Error message for a failed page, otherwise null

Real sample records:

{
  "pageTitle": "Albert Einstein",
  "quote": "\"Everything should be made simple as possible but no simpler.\"",
  "attribution": "Repeated throughout his life, see: Quote Investigator",
  "section": "Quotes",
  "language": "en",
  "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-06-05T17:54:21.379Z",
  "error": null
}

{
  "pageTitle": "Albert Einstein",
  "quote": "Un homme heureux est trop content du présent pour trop se soucier de l'avenir.",
  "attribution": "A happy man is too satisfied with the present to dwell too much on the future. From \"Mes Projets d'Avenir\", a French essay written at age 18 for a school exam (18 September 1896). The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein Vol. 1 (1987) Doc. 22.",
  "section": "Quotes > 1890s",
  "language": "en",
  "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-06-05T17:54:21.379Z",
  "error": null
}

{
  "pageTitle": "Albert Einstein",
  "quote": "Autoritätsdusel ist der größte Feind der Wahrheit.",
  "attribution": "Blind obedience to authority is the greatest enemy of truth.",
  "section": "Quotes > 1900s",
  "language": "en",
  "sourceUrl": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-06-05T17:54:21.379Z",
  "error": null
}

✨ Why choose this Actor

• Uses the official MediaWiki API, no fragile HTML scraping of rendered pages.
• One quotation per record, so the data drops straight into spreadsheets and databases.
• Attribution and source notes are preserved, not discarded.
• Ten language editions out of the box.
• Markup, templates, and reference tags are cleaned for you.
• Sends a descriptive User-Agent and follows page redirects responsibly.

📈 How it compares to alternatives

• Manual copy and paste loses structure and attribution. This Actor keeps quote, source, and section separate.
• Generic web scrapers return raw HTML full of markup. This Actor returns readable text.
• Static quote lists go stale. Wikiquote is community maintained and updated continuously.

🚀 How to use

1. Sign up for a free Apify account using this link.
2. Open the Wikiquote Quotations Scraper.
3. Enter one or more page titles and pick a language edition.
4. Set an item limit, then click Start.
5. Download your quotations or connect them to your app through the Apify API.

💼 Business use cases

Content and editorial

Need	How this helps
Sourcing quotes for articles	Pull attributed quotes with their origin note
Building newsletters	Compile themed quote sets per author

Apps and products

Need	How this helps
Quote of the day features	Feed a rotating bank of quotations
Chatbots and assistants	Ground responses in sourced quotes

Research and education

Need	How this helps
Citation collections	Capture quote plus source for references
Classroom materials	Gather quotes by figure or theme

Marketing and social

Need	How this helps
Social media content	Build a backlog of shareable quotes
Brand voice research	Study how figures phrased ideas

🔌 Automating Wikiquote Quotations Scraper

Connect runs and results to the tools you already use through Apify integrations and the API, including Make, Zapier, Slack, Airbyte, GitHub, and Google Drive. Trigger a run on a schedule, then route the quotations into your destination of choice.

🌟 Beyond business use cases

• Research: assemble primary quotation sets for a thesis or paper.
• Personal: build a personal commonplace book of favorite quotes.
• Non-profit: curate inspirational quotes for community programs.
• Experimentation: train or test text projects on attributed quotations.

🤖 Ask an AI assistant

Paste your collected quotations into ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, or Microsoft Copilot and ask it to group, theme, summarize, or fact check the attributions.

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

Where does the data come from? Directly from Wikiquote through the official MediaWiki action API.

Which languages are supported? English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Polish, Dutch, and Japanese editions.

How do I pick a page? Use the exact Wikiquote page title, for example Mark Twain. Redirects are followed automatically.

What counts as one record? Each individual quotation is one record.

Is attribution always present? No. When a quote has a source or context note it is captured, otherwise attribution is null.

What happens to a page with no quotes? It returns no quotation records for that page rather than failing the run.

Can I scrape several pages at once? Yes, pass multiple titles in the page titles list.

Are references and templates included? No, reference tags, templates, and citation only lines are stripped.

Is there a free tier? Yes, free plans are limited to 10 items per run. Paid plans raise the limit.

Is this affiliated with Wikiquote? No. It is an independent tool that reads publicly available content.

Does it modify Wikiquote? No. It only reads pages, it never edits anything.

🔌 Integrate with any app

Every run produces a structured dataset you can pull through the Apify API, webhooks, or any of the platform integrations, so the quotations flow into your spreadsheets, databases, or apps automatically.

🔗 Recommended Actors

• ParseForge collection for more reference and knowledge base scrapers.
• Browse the ParseForge store for related Wikipedia and reference data tools.

💡 Pro Tip: browse the complete ParseForge collection.

🆘 Need Help? Open our contact form

⚠️ Disclaimer: independent tool, not affiliated with Wikiquote or the Wikimedia Foundation. Only publicly available data is collected.