If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.

Steve Jobs delivered this line during his commencement address to Stanford University’s graduating class on June 12, 2005. In the speech, he recounts pivotal moments—dropping out of Reed College, being fired from Apple, and confronting illness—to argue that life’s meaning often becomes clear only in hindsight. The quoted sentence appears in his closing advice, where he urges graduates to pursue work and lives they genuinely love rather than defaulting to safe or conventional choices. It echoes the countercultural “Whole Earth Catalog” sign-off he also cites: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”

Jobs frames vocation and love as matters of intuition and integrity: the right path is not merely rationally optimized but felt as a deep internal “fit.” “Keep looking” rejects complacency and social pressure to accept an adequate but unfulfilling career, relationship, or life direction. “Don’t settle” implies that compromise can become a form of self-betrayal, especially early in life when options remain open. By comparing purpose to “matters of the heart,” he elevates passion and conviction as legitimate guides, suggesting that authentic commitment produces clarity—“you’ll know”—that cannot be manufactured by external validation alone.