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Did Sarah Palin really say that she could see Russia from her house? Did Marie Antoinette really say 'Let them eat cake?' Learn the true story behind 10 of the most widely believed – but completely bogus – quotations misattributed to political figures.
The wife of Louis XVI may have been out of touch, but she probably never said this. The first recorded instance of this anecdote appears in "The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau," in which the republican philosopher writes, "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 pastry!'"
Rousseau's "Confessions" was completed in 1769, when Antoinette was 14 years old and still living in Austria.
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