Vol. 06 · Misquoted ·Speech ·252 of 348
"Stay hungry, stay foolish."
They never said that.
What people say
"Stay hungry, stay foolish."
What was actually said
"Stay hungry. Stay foolish." Steve Jobs — Stanford commencement address, 12 June 2005
Why it stuck
Jobs was quoting — "on the back cover of their final issue … they had … the words, 'Stay hungry. Stay foolish.'" — the Whole Earth Catalog's farewell, Stewart Brand's slogan from 1974. Jobs is closing with someone else's words, and that context is almost always dropped.
The "stay foolish" line belongs to Stewart Brand, not Jobs. It is the Whole Earth Catalog's signoff, not Apple's.
Know another line by heart?
Play the duel and see how many you can spot. Or browse the whole shelf.