Where does the quote “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right” come from?

Question

The quote "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right" is often attributed to Steve Jobs, but a quote posted on LibQuotes suggests that Steve Jobs was himself quoting someone else:

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right."

I tried Googling, but there are too many sites that simply attribute the quote to Steve Jobs

Is LibQuotes.com misquoting Steve Jobs? If not, who is Steve Jobs quoting?

Answer 1

Steve Jobs may have misremembered a quote from Andrew Sinclair's 1964 novel The Raker, from which Google Books gives the following snippet:

If you live each day as if it were your last, Death is hardly unexpected when he calls.

The wording is not identical, but the idea is very similar. Steve Jobs turned 17 in 1972, eight years after the novel's publication. By the time of the 2005 commencement address at Stanford, he was 50, which is more than enough time for a memory to get distorted.

Answer 2

Not quite the quote you are looking for, but perhaps an early basis/inspiration for it:

We learnt elsewhere, R. Eliezer said: Repent one day before your death. His disciples asked him, Does then one know on what day he will die? Then all the more reason that he repent to-day, he replied, lest he die to-morrow, and thus his whole life is spent in repentance.

^{(Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Shabbat, folio 153a, Soncino translation)}

Answer 3

Roman Emporer Marcus Aurelius c. 121 - 180 AD: “Perfection of character is this: to live each day as if it was your last, without frenzy, without apathy and without pretence.”