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Who really said it

The only way to do great work is to love what you do

Spoken by Steve Jobs 1955–2011 · co-founder & CEO of Apple; CEO of Pixar · said 12 June 2005
Verified In copyright

This is a real sentence from Jobs’s 2005 Stanford University Commencement Address, delivered 12 June 2005. It appears verbatim in Stanford’s own published text and in the video of the speech: “…the only way to do great work is to love what you do.”

Last verified 7 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Verified quote & credit

“The only way to do great work is to love what you do” — Steve Jobs, 2005 Stanford Commencement Address

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by Steve Jobs estate / Apple Inc.). 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 world of Steve Jobs — co-founder & CEO, Apple. Theme: "The only way to do great work is to love what you do". 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.

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Provenance

The source

Source
2005 Stanford Commencement Address
Speaker
Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple & Pixar
Delivered
12 June 2005, Stanford Stadium
Segment
Second story (“love and loss”)

You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. ↑ the popular one-liner is lifted from the middle of this passage

The sentence is almost always quoted on its own, but in the speech it is the hinge of a longer thought: satisfaction comes from great work, and great work comes from love of the work — hence “keep looking, don’t settle.”

Video & official transcript
Watch the address & read Stanford’s prepared text ↗
Stanford Report: ‘You’ve got to find what you love,’ Jobs says (12 June 2005)

How we verified it

  • Stanford published the full prepared text and video of the 12 June 2005 address on its own site: news.stanford.edu ↗.
  • Independent transcripts reproduce the line verbatim — e.g. jamesclear.com ↗ and rev.com ↗.
  • The underlying “do what you love” idea is older and is often mis-credited to Confucius — Quote Investigator ↗ traces that separate saying only to the 1980s.
In copyright

The quote is from a 2005 speech and is not in the public domain; Jobs’s address is under copyright. Short attributed quotation for commentary is customary fair use.

Fact-check

The idea is older than Jobs — and often mis-credited

The specific sentence is genuinely Steve Jobs’s. The confusion is about the underlying idea — “do work you love” — which long predates 2005 and is regularly pinned on people who never said it.

Confucius common

“Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life” is constantly credited to Confucius, but Quote Investigator ↗ finds no basis for it and traces the saying only to the 1980s. It is a different line from Jobs’s, but the two are frequently blurred together.

Kahlil Gibran

Gibran’s The Prophet (1923) — “Work is love made visible” — expresses a similar spirit and is occasionally cited as if it were the source of Jobs’s wording. It is a thematic ancestor, not the quote.

Bottom line: the exact sentence is Steve Jobs’s own, from his 2005 Stanford Commencement Address ↗ — but the broader “love your work” idea is much older and is not original to him.

Context

Why it mattered

Jobs delivered the address a year after his first cancer surgery, and its second story culminates in this line. Framed by his own firing from Apple and his return, the sentence lands not as breezy advice but as hard-won: love of the work is what carried him through being “an overnight failure.”

The speech has since become the most-watched commencement address on record, and this sentence is its most-quoted fragment — printed on posters, graduation cards, and startup walls worldwide.

The only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.

The counter-argument that grew up around it

The advice has drawn a notable backlash. Critics — including a widely shared 2024 Fortune essay ↗ and Cal Newport’s So Good They Can’t Ignore You — argue that “follow your passion” is survivorship-biased and can mislead people who don’t yet have a passion to follow.

Ironically, Jobs himself often framed his own path less as pre-existing passion than as persistence: he stayed with the work because he loved doing it, not because he had identified a calling in advance.

Explore

Filed under

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

Purpose Work

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 saysnews.stanford.edu

Stanford’s own page with the prepared text and video of the 2005 address — the primary source.
2005 Stanford Commencement Address (transcript)jamesclear.com

Full transcript reproducing the quote verbatim in context.
Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Speech Transcriptrev.com

Independent transcript confirming the exact wording.
Choose a Job You Love — Quote Originquoteinvestigator.com

Debunks the related Confucius attribution; traces “choose a job you love” to the 1980s.
Steve Jobs was wrong (opinion)fortune.com

Representative critique of the ‘love what you do’ advice.
Steve Jobsen.wikipedia.org

Biographical background on the author.

The true author

About Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs

1955–2011 · co-founder & CEO, Apple

Steven Paul Jobs (1955–2011) co-founded Apple in 1976, was forced out in 1985, and returned in 1997 to lead its revival with the iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad. He was also CEO of Pixar. His 2005 Stanford Commencement Address — built around three personal stories and the closing charge to “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” — became one of the most-watched speeches ever recorded.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

Jobs, Steve. “‘You’ve got to find what you love,’ Jobs says.” Commencement address, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 12 June 2005. Published in Stanford Report, 14 June 2005.

MLA (9th ed.)

Jobs, Steve. “Commencement Address.” Stanford University, 12 June 2005, Stanford Stadium, Stanford, CA.

APA (7th ed.)

Jobs, S. (2005, June 12). Commencement address [Speech]. Stanford University.

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Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘The only way to do great work is to love what you do’?” Last verified 7 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/the-only-way-to-do-great-work-is-to-love-what-you-do

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