Let Them Eat Cake! Trivia Quiz

Answer: Voltaire

The quote actually comes from a book called 'Friends Of Voltaire' by Evelyn Beatrice Hall. Voltaire himself never said it. However, there is a similar quote which is from Voltaire himself, from his 'Essay on Tolerance': "Think for yourselves, and let others enjoy the privilege to do so too."

Answer: Victoria

Queen Victoria was alleged to have said this on multiple occasions, such as watching a performance of Gilbert and Sullivan's 'HMS Pinafore'. According to Terry Deary in 'The Vile Victorians', Victoria wrote 'I was very much amused' in her diaries, but never actually said, "We are not amused."

Answer: Winston Churchill

Some misquotes from Churchill include 'the fascists of the future will be called anti-fascists' and 'the only traditions of the Navy are rum, sodomy and the lash'. The latter quote was actually from Churchill's assistant, Anthony Montague-Brown. However, when Churchill heard about it, he is reported to have wished that he HAD originally come up with the quote!

Answer: Marilyn French

It was not actually French herself who said this; it was a character created by French. Specifically, it was Val in 'The Women's Room'. According to her obituary in the "Guardian", French once told the paper, "I like men very much."

Answer: Michael Caine

It wasn't Caine himself who said this, but Peter Sellers, who was doing an impression of Caine on his answer machine at the time! Sellers also repeated the quote on 'Parkinson' in 1972, claiming that Caine liked to quote from the Guinness Book of Records, preceding his facts with the offending misquote.

Answer: Niccolo Machiavelli

This quote is said to have come from 'The Prince', and is a shortened and greatly simplified version of the original quote. The quote runs thus:

"Every one sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are...and in the actions of all men, and especially of princes, which it is not prudent to challenge, one judges by the result. For that reason, let a prince have the credit of conquering and holding his state, the means will always be considered honest, and he will be praised by everybody because the vulgar are always taken by what a thing seems to be and by what comes of it (...); for the few find a place there only when the many have no ground to rest on."

Answer: Hermann Goering

This originated from a fictional character, one Thiemann, a character in the pro-Nazi play 'Schlageter' by Hanns Johst. In the play Thiemann says to Schlageter, "Whenever I hear the word 'culture', I release the catch on my Browning". In World War II this version of the saying didn't accord with the Allied propaganda's image of Germans as completely humorless.

Answer: Martin Luther King Jr.

Although it sounds like something MLK would have said, the quote actually came from a Japanese-based American teacher called Jessica Dovey. Her comment referred to the death of Osama bin Laden, but rapidly went viral and became misattributed somewhere along the line.

It's from the Bible: "Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth, and let not thine heart be glad when he stumbleth: Lest the LORD see it, and it displease him, and he turn away his wrath from him." Proverbs 24: 17-18.

Answer: Mohandas Gandhi

An article in the "Christian Science Monitor" states that although there is no actual record of Gandhi saying this, there is a very similar quote from Nicholas Klein, a trade unionist, in 1914. He was giving a speech to the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America at the time.

Answer: Mariah Carey

Snopes.com confirms that the 'quote' actually comes from a fake satirical interview in an online magazine, 'Cupcake'. However, that did not stop it from being picked up almost immediately by the music press.