From the commencement address Jobs delivered at Stanford Stadium on 12 June 2005. The wording is exact, not a paraphrase: Wikiquote carries the sentence in its sourced section for that address, and the Steve Jobs Archive publishes the speech video and Jobs’s own drafts.
“Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life” Steve Jobs — Commencement Address, Stanford University, 12 June 2005. Verified: quotle.info
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In context
Evoking the world of Steve Jobs — Co-founder and CEO of Apple; chairman of Pixar. Theme: "Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life". 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 "Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life". 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
Work
Commencement Address, Stanford University
Delivered
12 June 2005, Stanford Stadium, Stanford, California
Speaker
Steve Jobs, co-founder and CEO of Apple
Status
Sourced — exact wording confirmed in the delivered address
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking.
Excerpt — the paragraph continues
The paragraph runs six sentences: after the two above it warns against letting other people’s opinions drown out your own inner voice, urges the graduates to follow their heart and intuition, and ends by calling everything else secondary. Because the address is in copyright, we quote only the opening and link to the full video rather than reproduce it.
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Restored video of the address, with Jobs’s speech drafts
Wikiquote places the sentence in its sourced section under “Address at Stanford University (2005),” cited to the Stanford University commencement address of 12 June 2005 — not in its Disputed or Misattributed lists.
The Steve Jobs Archive, the estate-run archive launched by Laurene Powell Jobs, quotes the identical sentence and dates the address to 12 June 2005 at Stanford Stadium, publishing restored video alongside Jobs’s own speech drafts.
A timestamped transcript of the delivery contains the line around the 13-minute mark, after the passage on death — confirming it was spoken, not only printed in a prepared text.
Quote Investigator has no article on this line — a search for the key phrase returns nothing. There is no competing origin claim or earlier attestation on record to weigh against the 2005 address.
The address was delivered and published in 2005, so it sits far inside US copyright — the pre-1931 public-domain threshold is not remotely in play. The Steve Jobs Archive publishes the speech video and Jobs’s drafts; quote the line briefly with attribution rather than reproducing the address.
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 Jobs quote problem
This one is real — which makes it the exception. Steve Jobs is among the internet’s most reliable magnets for invented wisdom, and the very speech this line comes from contains a phrase that is not his.
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“Stay hungry. Stay foolish.”Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Epilog (October 1974) Not originally Jobs
The address’s most-quoted words are a borrowing, and Jobs said so on stage. Wikiquote files the phrase under “Misattributed”, noting it comes from the final edition of the Whole Earth Catalog and that Jobs acknowledged as much in the 2005 address; Wikipedia identifies it as the farewell message on the back cover of the last 1974 edition.
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“Good artists copy; great artists steal.”Pablo Picasso, as Jobs quoted him Jobs was quoting
A favourite Jobs line, routinely reproduced as though he coined it. Wikiquote lists it as misattributed to Jobs, calling it his (mis)quotation of Picasso and noting similar sayings pinned on Stravinsky and T. S. Eliot.
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“The musicians play their instruments. I play the orchestra.”The film “Jobs” Screen dialogue
Widely circulated as vintage Jobs. Wikiquote records that it “merely appears in the film ‘Jobs’” and questions whether it rests on any real source.
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This quote, shorn of its paragraphSteve Jobs — correctly, but rarely in full Wording drift
The sentence circulates as a standalone aphorism, often welded onto “Stay hungry. Stay foolish.” from the speech’s close, or trimmed to “Your time is limited, don’t waste it…” In the address it opens a six-sentence run about dogma, other people’s opinions and following your intuition — Wikiquote quotes the paragraph whole.
✓Genuine, and unusually well documented for a line this viral: Steve Jobs spoke it at Stanford Stadium on 12 June 2005, near the end of his commencement address. Both Wikiquote’s sourced entry and the Steve Jobs Archive carry the identical wording.
Context
Why it mattered
Jobs built the Stanford address around three stories: dropping out of Reed College, being fired from Apple, and death. This sentence belongs to the third. He had been diagnosed with a pancreatic neuroendocrine tumour in 2003 and treated for it, and the mortality section is where the speech stops being a career story and becomes advice — “Death is very likely the single best invention of Life” sits a few lines above it.
The address has outlived almost everything else Jobs said in public. The Steve Jobs Archive, launched by Laurene Powell Jobs, has since restored it in HD and published Jobs’s working drafts alongside it — the rare case where a viral inspirational line can be checked against the speaker’s own manuscript.
The line is genuine. The speech’s most-quoted closing words are not Jobs’s own.
The borrowed ending
Jobs closed the address by describing the back cover of the final edition of Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Catalog — the Whole Earth Epilog of October 1974 — and the farewell message printed under a photograph of an early-morning country road. Wikipedia’s account of the Catalog notes that Jobs quoted that farewell message explicitly and then made it his own final recommendation.
So the two most-shared sentences from one speech have opposite provenance: “Your time is limited” is Jobs’s own, and the sign-off is a quotation he credited on stage. Wikiquote files the sign-off under “Misattributed” for exactly that reason.
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1955–2011 · Co-founder and CEO of Apple; chairman of Pixar
Steve Jobs (born 24 February 1955, died 5 October 2011) co-founded Apple in 1976, was forced out of the company he built, founded NeXT, and became chairman and principal investor of Pixar before returning to run Apple. He was diagnosed with a pancreatic neuroendocrine tumour in 2003, and the Stanford address he gave two years later is the closest thing he left to a personal credo. He is also, precisely because of that reputation for aphorism, one of the names the internet most freely invents quotes for — which is why a genuine Jobs line is worth pinning down carefully.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Primary source
Steve Jobs, "Commencement Address" (speech, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, June 12, 2005). Video and speech drafts published by the Steve Jobs Archive, https://stevejobsarchive.com/stories/stay-hungry-stay-foolish.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life’?” Last verified 4 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/your-time-is-limited-so-dont-waste-it-living-someone-elses/