Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.

This line is authentically Steve Jobs's, drawn from the single most famous speech he ever gave: his commencement address to the Stanford University graduating class of June 12, 2005. It appears verbatim in Stanford's official prepared text and in the recorded audio and video of the address, where it falls in the closing "about death" story Jobs told after his 2003 pancreatic cancer diagnosis, just before the "Don't be trapped by dogma" line and his famous "Stay hungry, stay foolish" farewell. The wording is stable and uncontested across the official transcript, news transcripts, and the recording, and there is no credible rival claimant or older source that would displace Jobs as its author. Later biographies and books quote it as his, and the address itself has been viewed well over a hundred million times, which is why the sentence now circulates so widely as a standalone aphorism. With a dated, primary transcript and a matching recording authored and delivered by the credited speaker, this meets our standard for verification rather than mere common attribution.