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Who really said it

The socialism I believe in is everyone working for each other, everyone having a share of the rewards. It's the way I see football, the way I see life

Bill Shankly — but not in these words Bill Shankly 1913–1981 · Liverpool manager, 1959–1974
Disputed In copyright

Shankly did say this, at greater length: his 1976 autobiography Shankly — an as-told-to book written with the journalist John Roberts — has it in full, and full-text search inside the scanned book confirms the passage “…by collective effort, with everyone working for each other, everyone helping each other, and everyone having a share of the rewards at the end of the day. That might be asking a lot, but it’s the way I see football and the way I see life.” The tidy one-line version in circulation is a later condensation — it drops “everyone helping each other,” drops “at the end of the day,” and drops the qualifier “that might be asking a lot” — and that exact sentence appears nowhere in his own book.

Last verified 24 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed wording — copy with the correction

“The socialism I believe in is everyone working for each other, everyone having a share of the rewards. It's the way I see football, the way I see life” Bill Shankly wrote this at greater length in his autobiography "Shankly" (1976): "The socialism I believe in is not really politics. It is a way of living. It is humanity. I believe the only way to live and to be truly successful is by collective effort, with everyone working for each other, everyone helping each other, and everyone having a share of the rewards at the end of the day. That might be asking a lot, but it's the way I see football and the way I see life." The familiar one-sentence version is a later condensation and does not appear in his book. — Quotle.info

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by Estate of Bill Shankly and the publishers of Shankly (Barker, 1976)). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

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In context

Evoking the themes of justice, work and kindness. Theme: "The socialism I believe in is everyone working for each other, everyone having a share of the rewards. It's the way I see football, the way I see life". 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 "The socialism I believe in is everyone working for each other, everyone having a share of the rewards. It's the way I see football, the way I see life". 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

The book it actually comes from

Work
Shankly — his authorised autobiography, written with John Roberts
First published
1976 · Barker
Copy verified
Readers Union printing, 1977, scanned at the Internet Archive
Popular wording
Not in the book — a later condensation

The socialism I believe in is not really politics. It is a way of living. It is humanity. I believe the only way to live and to be truly successful is by collective effort, with everyone working for each other, everyone helping each other, and everyone having a share of the rewards at the end of the day. That might be asking a lot, but it’s the way I see football and the way I see life. Condensed in circulation

Confirmed by full-text search inside the scanned book ↗, which returns Shankly by Bill Shankly among the matches. The scan’s OCR renders the first full stop as a comma (“not really politics, It is a way of living”); the punctuation above follows the reading printed in the many later books that reproduce the passage.

Scanned first-person source
Shankly, the 1977 Readers Union printing, at the Internet Archive
Search inside Shankly for the passage

How we verified this

  • Shankly’s own autobiography carries the long form. A full-text search for “That might be asking a lot, but it’s the way I see football” ↗ returns Shankly by Bill Shankly, with the snippet continuing “and the way I see life.”
  • The short one-liner is not in that book. A search for the popular wording ↗ returns about a dozen results, all later books — Dave Zirin’s Bad Sports, Gabriel Kuhn’s Soccer vs. the State, Nick Davidson’s Modern Football Is Still Rubbish and others — but not Shankly’s own.
  • Wikiquote ↗ lists the short wording in its main quotes section, sourcing it not to Shankly but to Adam Powley and Robert Gillan’s Shankly’s Village (Pitch, 2015) — a book published nearly four decades after the autobiography.
  • Open Library’s record for the work ↗ confirms Shankly was first published in 1976 by Barker, with a Readers Union printing the following year — the copy that was scanned.
In copyright

The passage comes from Shankly, first published in 1976 — well after the 1931 United States public-domain cutoff — so the text remains in copyright. The short one-line version has no identified author at all, which is a second reason not to treat it as free to reuse.

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.

Fact-check

The wording keeps shrinking

Nobody is stealing this line from Shankly. What has happened instead is attrition: each retelling files off another clause until a paragraph becomes a slogan. At least three different “exact quotes” are now in circulation, and none of them is the sentence he wrote.

“everyone working for each other, everyone having a share of the rewards. It’s the way I see football, the way I see life” condensation

The version on this page. It appears in later books — Zirin, Kuhn, Davidson, Rostron and others ↗ — but a search inside Shankly’s own book does not return it. Three clauses have been cut: “everyone helping each other,” “at the end of the day,” and the hedge “that might be asking a lot.”

“everybody working for the same goal and everybody having a share in the rewards. That’s how I see football, that’s how I see life” unsourced variant

A further rewrite that swaps “for each other” for “for the same goal.” Wikiquote parked it on its talk page under “Unsourced” ↗ rather than in the article, precisely because nobody could point to where he said it.

“everyone working together, everyone having a share of the rewards… It’s the way I see football, the way I see life” variant

A third form, with “working together” in place of “working for each other,” which turns up in The Pocket Book of Liverpool ↗ introduced with the vague tag “he once said.”

What the autobiography actually records, and what the scan of his own book confirms ↗, is longer and less certain of itself: socialism as “not really politics … a way of living … humanity,” achieved by collective effort — and then, disarmingly, “that might be asking a lot.”

Context

Why the missing clause matters

Shankly grew up in Glenbuck, an Ayrshire pit village, and went down the mine with his brother Bob after leaving school in 1928 ↗, until the pit closed and he faced unemployment. When he wrote about socialism decades later, he was not reaching for a political programme; he was describing the only economics he had ever seen work — a shift where everyone pulls or nobody eats.

The condensation is a better slogan and a worse portrait. Shankly’s own paragraph contains a clause the one-liner always cuts: that might be asking a lot. He knew he was describing an ideal, not a settled fact about football or about Britain. Strip the hedge and you turn a man who hoped into a man who pronounced.

“That might be asking a lot” — the four words the famous version always deletes.

Read the full story

The book itself was late work. Shankly announced his retirement as Liverpool manager on 12 July 1974, after fifteen years in the job, and the autobiography followed in 1976. He died in 1981.

The passage travels far outside football writing: the same lines are quoted in academic and political books, from Stephen G. Jones’s Sport, Politics, and the Working Class to Simon Critchley’s What We Think About When We Think About Football — which is exactly the sort of circulation that sands a paragraph down into a sentence.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Justice Work Kindness Purpose

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Wikiquote — Bill Shanklyen.wikiquote.org

Carries the short one-line wording, sourced not to Shankly but to Powley and Gillan's Shankly's Village (Pitch, 2015).
Wikiquote talk page — unsourced Shankly quotesen.wikiquote.org

Holds a third variant, "everybody working for the same goal," in its Unsourced list.
Shankly (1977 printing) at the Internet Archivearchive.org

The scanned copy of Shankly's own autobiography whose text carries the long passage.
Search inside Shankly's autobiographyopenlibrary.org

Full-text search returning the passage inside Shankly's own book, alongside the later books that reprint it.
Open Library — the work record for Shanklyopenlibrary.org

Confirms first publication in 1976 by Barker, with a Readers Union printing in 1977.
Wikipedia — Bill Shanklyen.wikipedia.org

Biography: the Glenbuck pit, the Preston playing years, and the Liverpool managership from 1959 to 1974.

The man who said it — at greater length

Bill Shankly

Bill Shankly

1913–1981 · Liverpool manager 1959–1974 · Glenbuck miner turned football’s great evangelist

Born in Glenbuck, an Ayrshire coal village, Shankly worked in the pit after leaving school in 1928 before playing for Carlisle United and then Preston North End. He managed Carlisle, Grimsby, Workington and Huddersfield before taking over a Second Division Liverpool in 1959 and leaving, fifteen years later, with three league titles, two FA Cups and a UEFA Cup. His 1976 autobiography, Shankly, is where the socialism passage appears — written not as a manifesto but as a description of how he thought a dressing room, and a life, ought to work.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source

Bill Shankly, Shankly (Barker, 1976); passage verified by full-text search inside the scanned Readers Union printing of 1977. Shankly's text reads: “The socialism I believe in is not really politics. It is a way of living. It is humanity. I believe the only way to live and to be truly successful is by collective effort, with everyone working for each other, everyone helping each other, and everyone having a share of the rewards at the end of the day. That might be asking a lot, but it's the way I see football and the way I see life.” The shorter one-sentence version in wide circulation does not appear in the book.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘The socialism I believe in is everyone working for each other, everyone having a share of the rewards. It's the way I see football, the way I see life’?” Last verified 24 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/the-socialism-i-believe-in-is-everyone-working-for-each/

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