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Who really said it

If you live each day as if it were your last, someday you will most certainly be right

Quoted by Steve Jobs in 2005 — author unidentified Unknown Unattributed · read by Jobs around 1972, quoted by him in 2005
Disputed In copyright

Jobs said it, and immediately disclaimed it. His exact words at the Stanford commencement on 12 June 2005 were: ‘When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like, “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.”’ Note ‘I read,’ ‘something like,’ and ‘was’ rather than ‘were.’ He was reciting from memory something he had read 33 years earlier. The earliest documented form of the line is credited to Fred Allen in 1953; whether that is what Jobs read at 17 is not established.

Last verified 21 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“If you live each day as if it were your last, someday you will most certainly be right” Quoted by Steve Jobs at Stanford, 12 June 2005, as something he read at 17 — original author unidentified. Earliest documented form credited to Fred Allen, 1953 (Cleveland Plain Dealer, quoting Pageant).

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Steve Jobs. Use the credit shown above instead.

Can you use it?

Still under copyright. A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

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In context

Evoking the themes of mortality and time. Theme: "If you live each day as if it were your last, someday you will most certainly be right". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "If you live each day as if it were your last, someday you will most certainly be right". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The source

Where Jobs said it
Stanford University commencement address
Date
12 June 2005
What he read at 17
Unidentified — around 1972
Nearest located antecedents
Fred Allen, 1953 (full joke); The Raker, 1964 (opening clause only); Breaker Morant, 1980 (later)

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like, "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." Stanford, 12 June 2005

Jobs’s verbatim words, hedges intact. He is doing something quotation sites systematically undo: attributing. ‘I read a quote that went something like’ is an author telling you plainly that these are not his words and probably not the original ones either. Both halves of that warning got stripped on the way to the coffee mug.

Stanford News — the 2005 commencement address, full text

How we traced it

  • Start with what is certain. Stanford publishes the address and its transcript, so Jobs’s wording is fixed and so is the disclaimer built into it. He was born in February 1955, so ‘when I was 17’ puts the reading in 1972 or early 1973 — which rules out every candidate published later the address ↗.
  • The best located antecedent is Andrew Sinclair’s novel The Raker (1964), which Google Books returns for the sentence: ‘If you live each day as if it were your last, Death is hardly unexpected when he calls.’ It is the right date and the right first half — but the ending is different, and the ending is the whole joke the research thread ↗.
  • The full joke — the ‘one day you’ll be right’ sting — is documented well before Jobs read it. The earliest located instance is credited to Fred Allen: ‘Live every day as if it were your last—and some day you’ll be right’ (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 15 February 1953, quoting Allen in Pageant). Newspapers pinned much the same line on jazzman Cannonball Adderley by 1961. The 1980 film Breaker Morant carries a later restatement; Wikiquote only says the version ‘goes back at least to 1980,’ an explicit floor, not a first sighting the citations ↗.
  • The Marcus Aurelius lead is half right. Meditations VII.69 genuinely says ‘to live each day as though one’s last, never flustered, never apathetic, never attitudinizing’ — so the opening clause really is Aurelian. What is not there is the fatalistic punchline; the gag ending that makes this a joke has never been traced to any classical text.
In copyright

Jobs died in 2011, so the 2005 address is in copyright — in the US, life plus 70 years, into the 2080s. Stanford publishes the text and video freely for reading, which is not the same as a licence to reprint. Quote the sentence with attribution; do not lift the speech. The Raker (1964) and Breaker Morant (1980) are separately in copyright to their own authors. This is not legal advice.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

The attribution problem

This is the rare case where the famous person told everyone he was quoting somebody else, in the same sentence, on video, and got the credit anyway.

Steve Jobs — the speaker, not the author he said so himself

‘When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like…’ That is a disclaimer, and it is the first clause of the passage everyone quotes. The wording drifts too: Jobs said ‘as if it was your last,’ while the version in circulation has tidied it to ‘were.’

Fred Allen (1953) the nearest lead

‘Live every day as if it were your last—and some day you’ll be right’ ran in the Cleveland Plain Dealer on 15 February 1953, credited to Fred Allen in Pageant. That is the full joke, punchline and all, nineteen years before Jobs read his version at 17 — which makes it the strongest candidate for what he actually read.

Andrew Sinclair, The Raker (1964) opening clause only

‘If you live each day as if it were your last, Death is hardly unexpected when he calls.’ The opening clause matches word for word, but Sinclair’s ending is sombre where the famous line is a joke — so this attests the setup, not the punchline.

Breaker Morant (1980) a later restatement

‘Live every day as if it were going to be your last. One day, you’re sure to be right.’ The right structure and the right sting — but the film came out in 1980, a later restatement of a joke already in print by 1953. A sibling, not a parent.

The opening clause only partly right

Meditations VII.69 really does say ‘to live each day as though one’s last, never flustered, never apathetic, never attitudinizing’ — so the opening clause is genuinely Aurelian. What is missing is the fatalistic punchline; the gag ending that makes this quotation funny has never been traced to any classical text.

Cannonball Adderley (1961); Benny Hill, Frank Sinatra, Malachy McCourt mixed record

Jazzman Cannonball Adderley got a near-identical line in print by 1961 (Chicago Daily Tribune, 23 April; Boston Globe, 19 November) — a real dated attribution, though it reads as a re-quote of Allen. The other names (Benny Hill, Frank Sinatra, Malachy McCourt) circulate with no source at all.

Steve Jobs said it at Stanford on 12 June 2005 and stated in the same sentence that he had read it at 17; the original author remains unidentified. The earliest documented form of the line is credited to Fred Allen in 1953 — nineteen years before Jobs read it — while Andrew Sinclair’s The Raker (1964) shares only the opening clause the citations ↗.

Context

Why it resonates

The joke is that the advice comes with a guarantee. Every other version of ‘live each day as if it were your last’ is uplift; this one points out that the premise eventually comes true, which is both funnier and more useful.

Jobs then did the thing that made it stick: he turned it into a daily procedure. Mirror, morning, one question. That is why a line he explicitly borrowed ended up with his name on it — he supplied the part nobody else had, which was what to actually do with it.

Every other version of this advice is uplift. This one points out that the premise comes true.

What Jobs did with it

‘It made an impression on me. And since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself, “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?”’

‘And whenever the answer has been no for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.’

‘Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.’

He had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer roughly a year before the speech, which he describes a few paragraphs later.

Stanford commencement, 12 June 2005; Jobs died on 5 October 2011.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Mortality Time

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

‘You’ve got to find what you love,’ Jobs says — Stanford, 2005news.stanford.edu

The official transcript. The quotation is in the third story, the one about death.
Where does the quote come from? — Literature Stack Exchangeliterature.stackexchange.com

The research thread that surfaced The Raker, a Talmudic parallel (Shabbat 153a) and a Marcus Aurelius answer — and did not settle it.
Steve Jobs — Wikiquote, Stanford address sectionen.wikiquote.org

Carries the 1980 Breaker Morant antecedent as an editorial note under the quotation.
The Raker (1964) — Andrew Sinclairvalancourtbooks.com

The novel itself: a phantasmagoric, gothic vision of a city of death. Publisher description only — the page does not carry the sentence.

Popularly credited author

Why it gets pinned on Jobs

Steve Jobs

1955–2011 · co-founder and CEO, Apple

Steve Jobs delivered the Stanford commencement address a year after a pancreatic cancer diagnosis and six years before it killed him, and the speech has been watched tens of millions of times — which is enough to overwrite the provenance of anything said in it. He is also, awkwardly for the record, a careful attributor here: he flagged the borrowing, hedged the wording, and moved on. The line became ‘a Steve Jobs quote’ because he made it famous, not because he claimed it.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

Jobs, Steve. Commencement address, Stanford University, 12 June 2005 — quoted by Jobs as something he read at 17; original author unidentified. Earliest documented form of the line: attributed to Fred Allen, Cleveland Plain Dealer, 15 February 1953 (quoting Pageant). Compare Andrew Sinclair, The Raker (London: Jonathan Cape, 1964), which shares the opening clause only.

MLA (9th ed.)

Jobs, Steve. Commencement Address. Stanford University, 12 June 2005. Quoting an unidentified source.

APA (7th ed.)

Jobs, S. (2005, June 12). Commencement address. Stanford University. [Quoting an unidentified source.]

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘If you live each day as if it were your last, someday you will most certainly be right’?” Last verified 21 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/if-you-live-each-day-as-if-it-were-your-last-someday/

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