If you are first you are first. If you are second you are nothing
Attributed toBill Shankly1913–1981 · Scottish footballer and manager, Liverpool FC 1959–1974
≈Attribution status: Credited to Shankly everywhere and consistent with his outlook — but tied to no documented source.?Reuse status: Rights unconfirmed
Universally credited to Shankly and entirely of a piece with his documented win-or-nothing creed — but no primary source pins this wording to him. No speech, interview, broadcast or book page has been located that carries it, and the line does not appear in the sourced quotes on Wikiquote’s Bill Shankly page ↗. The most prominent documented use found is as the title of Oliver Holt’s 2006 book on Ferguson and Shankly — by which point the line was already circulating as a known Shankly saying.
“If you are first you are first. If you are second you are nothing” attributed to Bill Shankly (1913–1981), Liverpool manager 1959–1974. No primary source has been located; the wording is the title of Oliver Holt's "If You're Second You Are Nothing: Ferguson and Shankly" (Macmillan, London, 2006). Via Quotle.info.
Can you use it?
? We couldn’t verify where this wording comes from, so there’s no rights status to give. Safe to present as an unverified or anonymous line — just don’t assert a specific author or source.
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In context
Evoking the world of Bill Shankly — Scottish football manager, Liverpool FC 1959–1974. Theme: "If you are first you are first. If you are second you are nothing". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Minimalist
Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "If you are first you are first. If you are second you are nothing". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Provenance
What the record shows
Quote as circulated
If you are first you are first. If you are second you are nothing.
Attributed to
Bill Shankly (1913–1981), Liverpool manager 1959–1974
Primary source
None located — no speech, interview, broadcast or book page found carrying the wording
Prominent documented use
Oliver Holt, If You’re Second You Are Nothing: Ferguson and Shankly (Macmillan, London, 2006)
If you are first you are first. If you are second you are nothing.
Also circulated as “If you are first you are first. If you are second, you are nothing,” and compressed to “First is first, second is nothing.” No version has been traced to a documented Shankly source.
The specialists do not carry it.Wikiquote’s Bill Shankly page ↗ lists only a short set of sourced quotations — the piano line, the “holy trinity” line, the 1981 Granada Television remark about life and death, and his statement of belief in socialism — and this quotation is not among them. Quote Investigator has no article on it.
The aggregators cite nothing.AZQuotes ↗ runs the compressed form “First is first, Second is nothing” under Shankly’s name with no book, date, interview or other citation attached — the pattern across every site carrying the line.
It was a known saying by 2006. Oliver Holt used the wording as the title of his dual study of Alex Ferguson and Shankly, If You’re Second You Are Nothing (Macmillan, London, 2006; catalogue record ↗). A contemporary When Saturday Comes review ↗ says both managers shared the sentiment of the title, but does not say where or when Shankly said it.
What is documented is the attitude, not the sentence. The same review quotes Shankly writing to a journalist in 1955 that he used to think it would be better to die than to lose — the recorded version of the creed this quotation compresses.
No status can be asserted, because no source work has been identified. Note that Shankly spoke and published entirely in the modern era — his managerial career ran to 1974 and his autobiography appeared in 1976 — so if the line is ever traced to a genuine book, article or broadcast, that work will be in copyright under United States law rather than public domain. Treat the wording as unfree until an origin is established.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
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Fact-check
How this one travels
Nobody is claiming this line for a rival name — the problem is the opposite. It is credited to Shankly so uniformly, and so casually, that no one has ever been obliged to say where it came from.
✕
Quotation aggregatorsBill Shankly no citation
AZQuotes ↗ and the other large quote databases carry the line under Shankly’s name with no source field at all. A quotation that appears on a hundred pages and in zero footnotes has not been verified a hundred times; it has been copied a hundred times.
✕
Reference worksunattributed absent
The line is missing from the sourced quotations on Wikiquote’s Bill Shankly page ↗, and the Wikipedia biography ↗ does not quote it either. Absence from both is not proof he never said it, but it does mean no editor has yet produced a citation.
His best-known remark is a standing warning about this author. Wikiquote sources it to a Granada Television chat show hosted by Shelley Rohde on 20 May 1981, in the form “Someone said to me ‘To you football is a matter of life or death!’ and I said ‘Listen, it’s more important than that’” — not the polished paragraph usually printed. Wikiquote also files “Aim for the sky and you’ll reach the ceiling” as disputed ↗, noting similar anonymous sayings predate the attribution to him.
✓The honest answer: this is Shankly’s philosophy, and quite possibly Shankly’s words — but until someone produces the page or the tape, it is an attribution, not a citation. What is on the record is the 1955 letter quoted in When Saturday Comes ↗, in which he wrote that he used to think it would be better to die than to lose.
Context
Why it sticks to him
Shankly is one of the few managers whose reputation rests as much on what he said as on what he won, and that is precisely why unsourced lines attach to him so easily. A saying that sounds like him gets credited to him, and the credit hardens into fact through repetition rather than evidence.
The sentiment here is not in doubt. Shankly took over a Liverpool side in the Second Division in 1959 and left in 1974 having won three league titles, two FA Cups and a UEFA Cup; the surviving record of his own words, including the 1955 letter about preferring death to defeat, is consistent with a man who regarded finishing second as failure. What is missing is the moment — the interview, the dressing room, the page — where this particular sentence was actually spoken.
A quotation on a hundred websites and in zero footnotes has been copied a hundred times, not verified once.
Read the full story
Oliver Holt’s 2006 Macmillan book took the phrase as its title for a study of Shankly and Alex Ferguson, which tells us the line was in circulation as a Shankly saying by then and read as instantly recognisable. It does not tell us where it started.
If you have a dated primary source — a newspaper report, a broadcast transcript, or a page reference in one of the Shankly biographies or in his 1976 autobiography — that would settle this page, and we would upgrade it.
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1913–1981 · Scottish football manager, Liverpool FC 1959–1974
Bill Shankly was born in the Ayrshire mining village of Glenbuck on 2 September 1913 and died on 29 September 1981. After managing Carlisle United, Grimsby Town, Workington and Huddersfield Town, he took charge of a second-division Liverpool in 1959 and rebuilt it into a club that won three First Division titles, two FA Cups and a UEFA Cup before he retired in 1974. He is remembered as much for his talk as for his trophies — an aphoristic manager whose lines circulate so freely that even his most famous one, the remark about football being more important than life and death, is almost always repeated in a form he did not actually use.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
How to cite this attribution
No primary source located. Widely attributed without citation to Bill Shankly (1913–1981); the wording appears as the title of Oliver Holt, If You’re Second You Are Nothing: Ferguson and Shankly (London: Macmillan, 2006).
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘If you are first you are first. If you are second you are nothing’?” Last verified 22 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/if-you-are-first-you-are-first-if-you-are-second-you-are/