Function: quote

quote is a special form defined in eval.c.

Signature

(quote ARG)

Documentation

Return the argument, without evaluating it. (quote x) yields x.

Warning: quote does not construct its return value, but just returns the value that was pre-constructed by the Lisp reader (see info node
(elisp)Printed Representation).
This means that '(a . b) is not identical to (cons 'a 'b): the former does not cons. Quoting should be reserved for constants that will never be modified by side-effects, unless you like self-modifying code. See the common pitfall in info node (elisp)Rearrangement for an example of unexpected results when a quoted object is modified.

Probably introduced at or before Emacs version 1.4.

Source Code

// Defined in /usr/src/emacs/src/eval.c
{
  if (!NILP (XCDR (args)))
    xsignal2 (Qwrong_number_of_arguments, Qquote, Flength (args));
  return XCAR (args);
}