Wow. I've only really looked at this in C and OO languages. That Racket example distills the quine to its essence in a way I've never seen before. I have to agree with you.
It's arguably the most famous Quine of all, so famous that it has a pompous name! It's called the Omega combinator in lambda calculus, and is a stepping stone to the more famous Y combinator. If you think it's cool, the Y combinator will blow your mind :)
