Wikiquote Quotations Scraper

Wikiquote Quotations Scraper

Scrape quotes from any Wikiquote page by person, character, or topic, across ten languages. Every quotation returns with its text, source work, and page section. No login or API key. Export to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML.

Building a quote library or training a language model usually means copying and pasting from Wikiquote pages by hand. This Wikiquote scraper reads the public pages directly, collects every quote on them, and gives you back a clean dataset. You choose the pages and the language edition, and it handles the rest. It pulls quotes from any Wikiquote page title, whether a historical figure, a fictional character, or a theme page like "War".

Who uses it	What they scrape Wikiquote for
Content creators	Assemble a bank of verified quotes on a specific topic for articles or videos.
Researchers	Gather attributed statements from historical figures for qualitative analysis.
App developers	Populate a quote-of-the-day feature with fresh, sourced material.
Language learners	Collect native-language quotes to study vocabulary and sentence structure in context.

What it does

This Actor collects quotes from Wikiquote pages you specify and returns each one as a flat row with its text, source, and the section it appeared under.

• 🌍 Multilingual support: Pull quotes from English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Polish, Dutch, and Japanese editions.
• 📄 Bulk page processing: Feed in multiple page titles at once and get all their quotes in a single dataset.
• 🔢 Quota control: Set a maximum number of quotations per run so you never exceed your storage or analysis needs.
• 📂 Structured output: Every row tells you the quote text, the work or person it came from, and its Wikiquote section heading.

Results export to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML, or straight from the API.

What you can do with Wikiquote data

📚 Build a quote database.

A teacher feeds in pages for Shakespeare, Cervantes, and Molière across three languages to create a multilingual literature quote sheet for class.

🗣️ Train a chatbot on famous figures.

A developer scrapes Einstein and Twain pages for attributed quotes to fine-tune a conversational AI's persona and response style.

🔍 Analyze thematic language.

A researcher scrapes the "War" and "Peace" topic pages in multiple languages to compare how different cultures phrase similar ideas.

🇯🇵 Study Japanese through quotes.

A language learner scrapes pages of Japanese authors and public figures to collect natural example sentences with their attributed sources.

Why choose this scraper

	What you get
Quotes from any page	Type in a person, a book character, a film, or a proverb collection page and get its quotes.
Attribution and source	Each quote includes the work or person it is attributed to, where available on the page.
Multilingual quotes	Switch the language code and scrape the same concept across ten different Wikiquote editions.
Clean flat dataset	No nested objects: every quote is one row, ready for analysis or a database import.

How it compares

No other Store actor targets Wikiquote the same way, so the honest comparison is with the alternatives teams actually weigh.

	Wikiquote Quotations Scraper	Build it in-house	By hand
Setup	Run it now, zero config	Days of engineering	None, but hours per pull
When Wikiquote changes	Maintained for you	You fix it	You re-learn the page
Proxies, retries, anti-bot	Built in	Your problem	Browser only
Output	Fixed JSON schema, CSV/Excel export	Whatever you build	Copy-paste
Cost	Pay per result	Engineering time	Analyst hours

Configure the run

Drive the Actor from one or more Wikiquote page titles and select the language edition; a maximum quota limit caps the total rows returned as quotes are collected. The Input tab lists every parameter.

A first run with the defaults:

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

A larger pull:

{
  "pageTitles": [
    "Albert Einstein",
    "Mark Twain"
  ],
  "maxItems": 200
}

Pricing

Pay-per-result: $0.004 per result collected. You pay only for the results written to your dataset.

Results collected	Approximate cost
100 results	$0.40
1,000 results	$4.00
10,000 results	$40.00

New Apify accounts start with $5 in free credit.

Free users

Free-plan runs return up to 10 results as a preview. Upgrade your Apify plan to collect up to 1,000,000 results per run.

Run it

1. Create a free Apify account with $5 in credit.
2. Open the Wikiquote Quotations Scraper.
3. Set your inputs and any filters, then click Start.
4. Export the results as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML from the Dataset tab.

Run it programmatically through the Apify API (run-sync-get-dataset-items) or the ApifyClient for JavaScript and Python.

Use with AI agents (MCP)

Give an AI agent live access to Wikiquote through the Model Context Protocol. Add the Actor to Claude, Cursor, or any MCP client:

$claude mcp add --transport http apify "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=parseforge/wikiquote-quotations-scraper"

Then prompt it in plain language to run the scraper and read back the results.

Troubleshooting

I got zero results for my page title.

Check that the page title is an exact match for a Wikiquote page, including any disambiguation parentheses, and that it exists in the language edition you selected.

Some quotes are missing their source or attribution.

The Actor returns the source field exactly as it is marked up on the Wikiquote page. If a page lacks clear attribution for some quotes, those rows will show an empty source value.

The actor stops early and does not reach my max items limit.

The Actor stops when it has read all quotes from the specified pages. If the total number of quotes on those pages is less than your max items setting, it ends with that count.

Non-English characters look garbled in the exported file.

Ensure your export format and viewer support UTF-8 encoding. JSON and CSV exports from Apify default to UTF-8, but opening a CSV in Excel may require the import wizard to select UTF-8.

FAQ

Question	Answer
What page titles can I use?	You can use any valid Wikiquote page title: a person's name, a fictional character, a film title, or a thematic page like "Proverbs" or "Last words." Spaces and normal capitalization are fine.
How do I specify a language edition?	Choose from the language dropdown using standard language codes such as en, es, de, or ja. The Actor will query the corresponding Wikiquote subdomain for that language.
Does the scraper get the source of each quote?	Yes. Each quote row includes the source work or person it is attributed to, as it appears on the Wikiquote page, along with the section heading under which it was found.
What format does the output come in?	The dataset can be exported in CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML directly from your Apify run. Every row is one quote with its source and section.
Can I limit the number of quotes collected?	Yes, the max items setting stops the run after collecting the number of quotations you set. Set it high for full pages or low for a quick sample.
What if a page title has disambiguation parentheses?	Include them exactly as they appear on Wikiquote. For example, use "John Smith (explorer)" if the page title contains the parenthetical.
Does it collect quotes from sub-sections of a page?	Yes, it walks the whole page structure and collects quotes from all nested sections. Each quote registers the full section path where it was found.
Can I scrape multiple language editions in one run?	One run targets one language edition. To scrape multiple languages, run the Actor separately for each language code and merge the datasets afterwards.
Do I need a Wikimedia API key?	No. The Actor reads the public Wikiquote pages directly. No sign-up, no API key, and no OAuth flow is needed.
Is there a risk of hitting request limits?	The Actor operates with polite delays and respects Wikiquote's server load. For very large runs across many pages, it manages the request rate automatically.

Related actors

Browse the full ParseForge collection for more scrapers.

🆘 Need help? Email parseforge@protonmail.com with your run ID, your input, and what you expected.

⚠️ Disclaimer. This Actor is unofficial and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. It collects only publicly available data. You are responsible for using the collected data in compliance with the source's terms of service and applicable data-protection laws, including GDPR, CCPA, and PIPL. Do not use it to collect personal data unlawfully.