• Variant: At length I recollected the thoughtless saying of a great princess, who, on being informed that the country people had no bread, replied, "Then let them eat cake!" " - Meaning and context.">
This passage contains a statement Qu'ils mangent de la brioche that has usually come to be attributed to Marie Antoinette; this was written in 1766, when Marie Antoinette was 10 and still 4 years away from her marriage to Louis XVI of France, and is an account of events of 1740, before she was born. It also implies the phrase had been long known before that time.
• VI
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I remembered the way out suggested by a great princess when told that the peasants had no bread: "Well, let them eat cake".
• Variant: At length I recollected the thoughtless saying of a great princess, who, on being informed that the country people had no bread, replied, "Then let them eat cake!"

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "I remembered the way out suggested by a great princess when told that the peasants had no bread: "Well, let them eat cake".
• Variant: At length I recollected the thoughtless saying of a great princess, who, on being informed that the country people had no bread, replied, "Then let them eat cake!" " in the context of "This passage contains a statement Qu'ils mangent de la brioche that has usually come to be attributed to Marie Antoinette; this was written in 1766, when Marie Antoinette was 10 and still 4 years away from her marriage to Louis XVI of France, and is an account of events of 1740, before she was born. It also implies the phrase had been long known before that time.
• VI" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

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Source: Wikiquote: "Jean-Jacques Rousseau" (Quotes, Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1765-1770; published 1782), Books II-VI) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Jean-Jacques Rousseau

About Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (June 28, 1712 – July 2, 1778) was a major French-speaking Genevan philosopher of the Enlightenment whose political ideas influenced the French Revolution, the development of socialist theory, and the growth of nationalism.