"And sometimes to help them we have got to help ourselves"
About this Quote
The pronouns do the cultural work. “Them” is vague on purpose - bandmates, family, friends, fans, anyone you’ve tried to carry. “Ourselves” is blunt, almost unromantic. Vaughan isn’t selling self-care as a lifestyle; he’s pointing to the unglamorous mechanics of survival. If you’re unstable, compromised, or quietly unraveling, your help becomes unreliable at best and manipulative at worst: you give to stay needed, you fix to dodge your own repair, you martyr yourself because martyrdom feels like meaning.
There’s also a musician’s pragmatism baked in. On the road, in scenes fueled by alcohol and adrenaline, “helping” can mean enabling. The subtext reads like a boundary drawn without bitterness: the most responsible way to show up for someone is to get your own house in order, even if that looks, briefly, like stepping back.
It works because it refuses the tidy binary of selfish versus selfless. Vaughan frames self-improvement not as retreat, but as the prerequisite for any help that lasts.
Quote Details
| Topic | Self-Improvement |
|---|---|
| Source | Later attribution: Stevie Ray Vaughan (Stevie Ray Vaughan) modern compilation
Evidence: other not hurt each other sometimes to help them weve got to help ourselves so Other candidates (1) Closing Remarks to Russian Court (Aleksei Navalny) primary60.0% Song: "Closing Remarks to Russian Court" by Aleksei Navalny |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Vaughan, Stevie Ray. (2026, March 9). And sometimes to help them we have got to help ourselves. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/and-sometimes-to-help-them-we-have-got-to-help-151471/
Chicago Style
Vaughan, Stevie Ray. "And sometimes to help them we have got to help ourselves." FixQuotes. March 9, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/and-sometimes-to-help-them-we-have-got-to-help-151471/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"And sometimes to help them we have got to help ourselves." FixQuotes, 9 Mar. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/and-sometimes-to-help-them-we-have-got-to-help-151471/. Accessed 13 Mar. 2026.













