“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are” is widely credited to Theodore Roosevelt. In his Autobiography of 1913, Roosevelt gave the credit to someone else. He called it “a bit of homely philosophy, quoted by Squire Bill Widener, of Widener’s Valley, Virginia.”
The Theodore Roosevelt Center says the popular version is “misquoted in two ways.” Roosevelt credited Widener, and the original says “got,” not “have”: “Do what you can, with what you’ve got, where you are.”