That wasn't my point. I'm rather more obsessed with the practical issue of building the encyclopedia than with the theoretical one of verifiability in principle. Relevant quotes add to articles; obviously not just for the sake of it.
Quotes in the article where appropriate are fine - I thought you meant in the footnotes (you mentioned "more verbatim footnotes".
If you're writing an article on a mathematical theorem, for example, quoting from the paper that first discussed it (ie. the main primary source) would probably add to the article. I'm not sure quoting secondary sources would be useful very often, though.