The phrase "Let them eat cake" is traditionally attributed to Marie Antoinette, the queen of France during the French Revolution, as a supposedly callous response to being told that the peasants had no bread. However, there is no historical evidence that she ever actually said this. The original French phrase is "Qu’ils mangent de la brioche," which refers to a rich bread, not cake as commonly imagined. This quote likely originated from earlier sources, such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions around 1765, where it was attributed to "a great princess" but not specifically to Marie Antoinette, who was a child at the time and not yet in France
. The association of the phrase with Marie Antoinette appeared decades after her death and seems to have been popularized as revolutionary propaganda to depict her as oblivious to the suffering of the poor. Scholars now generally regard the quote as a journalistic cliché or legend rather than a factual statement by the queen
. In summary, while "Let them eat cake" is famously linked to Marie Antoinette, it is very unlikely she ever said it, and the phrase predates her involvement in French politics
