“If we choose the easy way, by letting another think for us, we must eventually tread the hard way. If we select the hard way, by insisting upon our own mental integrity, we eventually come to the easy way.”

Terry Gifford, LLO, page 693
1900s, Stickeen (1909)

Sometimes quoted with "difficult" instead of "hard".
A similar thought was expressed by automobile executive Clarence Bleicher in 1947 (before Bill Gates was born): "if you get a tough job, one that is hard, and you haven’t got a way to make it easy, put a lazy man on it, and after 10 days he will have an easy way to do it".
Misattributed
Source: http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/02/26/lazy-job/

"General Petraeus’s Opening Statement" (23 January 2007) http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/23/world/middleeast/24petraeustextcnd.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
Context: There are no easy choices. The way ahead will be very hard. Progress will require determination and difficult U. S. and Iraqi actions, especially the latter, as ultimately the outcome will be determined by the Iraqis. But hard is not hopeless, and if confirmed, I pledge to do my utmost to lead our wonderful men and women in uniform and those of our coalition partners in Iraq as we endeavor to help the Iraqis make the most of the opportunity our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines have given to them.

Source: The Truth

Source: Cash

Source: As quoted in Fourth Congress of the Communist International https://www.marxists.org/archive/zetkin/1922/ci/women.htm, marxists.org, November 1922.

Source: Rustin at a gay rights rally shortly before his death, quoted in "Bayard Rustin: Struggling for civil and human rights for all people" https://www.afsc.org/story/bayard-rustin by Walter Naegle

Geneva Davis; chapter 1, p. 8
Source: One Door Away from Heaven (2001)
Context: Change isn't easy, Micky. Changing the way you live means changing the way you think. Changing the way you think means changing what you believe about life. That's hard, sweetie. When we make our own misery, we sometimes cling to it even when we want so bad to change, because the misery is something we know. The misery is comfortable.

Innkeeper's wife
Source: A Child is Born (1942)
Context: God pity us indeed, for we are human,
And do not always see
The vision when it comes, the shining change,
Or, if we see it, do not follow it,
Because it is too hard, too strange, too new,
Too unbelievable, too difficult,
Warring too much with common, easy ways,
And now I know this, standing in this light,
Who have been half alive these many years,
Brooding on my own sorrow, my own pain,
Saying "I am a barren bough. Expect
Nor fruit nor blossom from a barren bough."