This is up for debate, but most sources agree that it is unlikely. One source stated: Marie Antoinette is supposed to have said this when she was told that the peasantry had no bread to eat. There's no evidence to support this story though. Another. . .http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_334.html Q: Did the French queen, Marie Antoinette, ever actually utter the phrase, "Let them eat cake"? I have a friend who claims that Crazy Marie actually said something in French that, in phonetic spelling, merely sounded like "Let them eat cake." Is the line in a class with Humphrey Bogart's "Play it again, Sam"--i.e., bogus? --Willie H., Chicago A: I have a dream that someday one of these alleged facts of history is actually going to pan out. However, today is not the day. While Marie Antoinette was certainly enough of a bubblehead to have said the phrase in question, there is no evidence that she actually did so, and in any case she did not originate it. The peasants-have-no-bread story was in common currency at least since the 1760s as an illustration of the decadence of the aristocracy. The political philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau mentions it in his Confessions in connection with an incident that occurred in 1740. (He stole wine while working as a tutor in Lyons and then had problems trying to scrounge up something to eat along with it.) He concludes thusly: "Finally I remembered the way out suggested by a great princess when told that the peasants had no bread: 'Well, let them eat cake.'" Now, J.-J. may have been embroidering this yarn with a line he had really heard many years later. But even so, at the time he was writing--early 1766--Marie Antoinette was only ten years old and still four years away from her marriage to the future Louis XVI. Writer Alphonse Karr in 1843 claimed that the line originated with a certain Duchess of Tuscany in 1760 or earlier, and that it was attributed to Marie Antoinette in 1789 by radical agitators who were trying to turn the populace against her. As for your friend's suggestion, I suppose it's possible that one day, while under the influence of powerful hallucinogens, Marie said Le theme est quete ("The theme is quest"), and was overheard by an English-speaking tourist--thus giving rise, as your friend suggests, to the "Let them eat cake" legend. But frankly I doubt it.

Okay, in order to answer the question with some knowledge instead of speculation: NO, Marie Antoinette never said "Let them eat cake", as a matter of fact, that same quote had been attributed to many other female leaders before her. One of which was the Spanish princess Marie Therese (not Antoinette's mother!), wife of Louis XIV; it was also attributed to one of Louis XVI's aunts (Madame Sophie); it is one of the many royal lores passed down through the generations. As a matter of fact, Rousseau mentions it in his Confessions in connection with an incident that occurred in 1740, Marie Antoinette had not even been born. The actual quote was "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche" which is not cake, it's a fluffy round bread. During the Flour Wars, when the French had no bread, Marie Antoinette wrote "It is quite certain that in seeing people who treat us so well despite their own misfortune, we are more obliged than ever to work hard for their happiness..." Where is your cold Marie Antoinette now?

No, she did not. It was political propaganda put out against her.