" You can't have the cake and eat it too!" Who said these words or how did it originate?

Question:this means that one must be prepared to sacrifice one thing inorder to enjoy another. This is often used that your option must be "either or" and noth both



Answers:
This has *nothing* to do with Marie Antoinette. She was talking about 'Let them eat cake' in relation to the starving peasants. The phrase is actually first recorded in 1546 as "wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?" From John Heywood's 'A dialogue Conteinyng the Nomber in Effect of All the Prouerbes in the Englishe Tongue' The modern version came about in the early 1800s.
Maybe Marie Antoinette, when she threw cake to the commoners
Typically, Marie Antoinette, French Queen is cited as saying this.

Context was wars France was fighting with the English.

However, the phrase seems to be an older English proverb (something people use as a wisdom).

You can read about it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/have_one's_...
Marie Antoinette said, 'Let them eat cake' when told that the peasants were starving and didn't have even any bread to eat. 'You can't have your cake and eat it' was a quote from the 'Psalms of Solomon' in the Old Testament
This is an old Eskimo story about a lone Eskimo who was so cold he decided he needed a fire to keep warm but the only thing he had to burn was his boat he was paddling so he broke off several bits at a time and added them to the fire on the little deck but soon the boat caught fire and sank with disastrous results sadly he found out the hard way




You can't have your kayak and heat it too
FOUL HORN:::::: AHOOOOOOOGA AHOOOGA

Marie Antoinette quote was in response to the complaint, "the peasants have no bread to eat. "

She replied "Let them eat cake."

Except that she didn't say it, and if she did, the cake in question was simply the loaves of bread that were at the top of the oven and thus harder and crustier.

Wikipedia answers are written by anyone with Internet access. That means that they are even less reliable than EducationAsk.coms.

Revision:

From "Random House Dictionary of Popular Proverbs and Sayings" by Gregory Y. Titelman:
"You can't have your cake and eat it too -- One can't use something up and still have it to enjoy. This proverb was recorded in the book of proverbs by John Heywood in 1546, and is first attested in the United States in the 1742 'Colonial Records of Georgia' in 'Original Papers, 1735-1752.' The adage is found in varying forms: You can't eat your cake and have it too. You can't have everything and eat it too; Eat your cake and have the crumbs in bed with you, etc. ..."
What Marie Antoinette said was actually 'Let them eat cake', which is something totally different. 'You can't have your cake and eat it' is a traditional adage and I expect its origins are lost. I looked in Brewers Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (sorry, is that really anoraky? It's a brilliant book!) and it didn't give an origin.
I think this came from "Let them eat cake" long time ago in France. The queen later was beheaded.
Marie Antoinette was Queen of France during their revolution about the time of the US revolution. The people were so poor that the Queen was told the peasants had no bread to eat.

She was either isolated from reality in her castle, or she was otherwise out of touch.

"If they have no bread, let them eat cake."

The French Revolution started shortly thereafter.
This, like all Marie Antoinette contributions is off the point of the question (which has been well answered by several guys), but I'd like to make a point about poor Marie-A, which might be interesting.

She probably never said it at all; it was put about at the time by republicans. And the point of it was that at that time France had a consumer protection law to the effect that if a baker ran out of common bread (price regulated by law), he must sell his expensive fancy breads at the same low price - this was to protect the poor from bakers who refused to bake the cheap bread to maximise profit. Until quite recently (maybe still) there was the same law in parts of Spain.

So when Marie-A was alleged to have said "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche" she was supposed to be imagining that the problem was with greedy bakers, not with starvation conditions. The implication is still that she was out of touch, however.

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