Steve Jobs gave deathbed speech about wealth being ‘meaningless’?

Claim:

Apple co-founder Steve Jobs left behind a deathbed speech about how wealth and material possessions were “meaningless.”

Rating:

In June 2025, a claim that Apple co-founder Steve Jobs delivered a deathbed speech about the meaninglessness of wealth and material possessions resurfaced on social media. 

For example, one Facebook post (archived) featuring the rumor had amassed more than 81,000 shares as of this writing. It stated: “Steve Jobs said before his death. He died a billionaire at 56yrs of Pancreatic Cancer and here are his last gifts to us…his thoughts on Life.” It then went on to transcribe his alleged deathbed speech.

At least two other Facebook accounts posted nearly identical content.

(Pam Crowe/Facebook)

The first Facebook post claimed that Jobs said the following, in part, before dying:

I reached the pinnacle of success in the business world. In others’ eyes my life is an epitome of success.

However, aside from work, I have little joy. In the end, wealth is only a fact of life that I am accustomed to.

At this moment, lying on the sick bed and recalling my whole life, I realize that all the recognition and wealth that I took so much pride in, have paled and become meaningless in the face of impending death.

The post continued with additional commentary about material possessions, comparing expensive items to cheaper alternatives and concluding that “your true inner happiness does not come from the material things of this world.”

However, we have rated the claim false because there was no credible evidence that Jobs ever spoke or wrote these words on his deathbed.

Snopes first investigated this claim in 2015 — four years after Jobs died in October 2011 — when the quote initially gained traction on social media platforms. The fabricated quote continued to circulate a decade later.

Origin of the quote

Using an advanced Google search, the earliest known version of this fabricated speech appeared on a WordPress blog (archived) in November 2015 under the title: “An inspiring story – Teaching great lessons about life.”

The second line of the article stated: “Though these words were send to me in the name of Steve Jobs, but in absence of any firm source they can’t be attributed to Mr. Jobs.”

Jobs died (archived) on Oct. 5, 2011, but no version of this alleged deathbed speech appeared online until four years later. If he had made such a statement, it would likely have been documented and reported much earlier given the intense media coverage of his death.

What we know about Jobs’ final words

In late October 2011, Jobs’ sister Mona Simpson revealed her brother’s final words in a eulogy published (archived) in The New York Times. She wrote:

Steve’s final words, hours earlier, were monosyllables, repeated three times.

Before embarking, he’d looked at his sister Patty, then for a long time at his children, then at his life’s partner, Laurene, and then over their shoulders past them.

Steve’s final words were:

OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.

Simpson’s account provided the only insight about Jobs’ final moments from someone who was present when he died. At no point did she mention any of the alleged passage shared in the above Facebook posts.

Given the details she provided regarding his condition, it would have been unlikely that he could produce the lengthy speech falsely attributed to him.

What Jobs actually said about life

While Jobs never delivered the fake deathbed speech, he did make documented statements about success and life priorities. In his 2005 Stanford commencement address (archived), Jobs said: “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.” At no point in this did he produce the words attributed to him in the social media posts.

Jobs’ authorized biographer Walter Isaacson documented that near the end of his life, Jobs expressed some regret about how he had balanced work and family. In a posthumous tribute for Time magazine (archived), Isaacson recalled Jobs saying the following when asked why he was keen to take part in more interviews, for a biography Isaacson was writing, in the two years before he died: “I wanted my kids to know me. I wasn’t always there for them, and I wanted them to know why and to understand what I did.”

—Snopes’ archives contributed to this report.

Sources