Who said, “Let them eat cake”?
We’re not entirely sure who said “Let them eat cake,” but we can tell you that it wasn’t Marie Antoinette. This flippant phrase about consuming pastry is commonly attributed to the frivolous queen in the days leading up to the French Revolution. Supposedly, she spoke these words upon hearing how the peasantry had no bread to eat. But biographers and historians have found no evidence that Marie uttered these words or anything like them. Our old pal Cecil Adams of The Straight Dope explains the quotation was first written by French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Confessions. Actually, Rousseau wrote “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche,” which essentially means “let them eat a type of egg-based bread” (not quite c
Marie Antoinette supposedly said it…..but it has been widely disputed. She was kind of given a bad rap by people during her time and historical evidence would indicate that she wasn’t that bad of a person. During her later years as queen she stopped purchasing any royal jewels and led a more simple life. People blast Marie Antoinette for being a spoiled brat, and while she might not have been one of the greatest thinkers of her time, one has to remember that she was married off while basically still a child and was only around 20 when she became queen. There were tensions between France/Austria, her husband was impotent for the first few years of her marriage, and she supposedly received constant criticism (via letters) from her mother. Yes, she did spend extravagent amounts of money for a while on clothing, etc. but she was expected to be more fashionable and better dressed than everyone else at court. The phrase was first written by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Confessions and translat
