The idea is that if you can't get your quote published outside of Wikipedia, you shouldn't put it in Wikipedia. Preferably, "outside" shouldn't be your own blog, but something more respectable.

Yes, having it published outside would be the start. I live in a world where it's easy for me to get things about Quantified Self published in relevant sources. I just have trouble placing something about my father in there to get his Wikipedia article factually correct. While he lived he wanted our press stories without entanglement.

It might be that I underrate the difficult that MIRI has with getting something published 'outside'. I would expect that it should be easy to find a Wired journalist who is happy to write such a story.

But even if you can not find an actual journalist, write the article yourself. Most newspapers do publish meaningful op-eds. I would be surprised if you wouldn't find a newspaper willing to publish it. It's free content for them and MIRI is sort of authoritative, so there no reason not to publish the article provided it's well written.

Getting something published in the Guardian's Comment-is-free is also really easy and might be enough that most Wikipedia editors consider it "outside".

Okay, let's talk about consequences. You add a MIRI quote to Wikipedia, someone deletes it. You add it again, someone deletes it again and quotes some Wikipedia rule. You add it again and perhaps even say that you consider Wikipedia rules irrelevant in this specific case.

I probably wouldn't engage in an edit war. I nowhere argued that you should be stupid about adding the article.

Yes, I do agree that you would want to go the road of getting the quote in some newspaper before you edit the Wikipedia article. Given that the article is about a topic with a lot of interest that what you need to do, to let the edit stick.