“What is difficult, makes me strong and willing.”

Source: "Facing Down Armageddon: Environment at a Crossroads," essay by Maurice Strong in World Policy Journal, Summer, 2009 "Successful management of today's traumatic processes of change will not be easy to achieve. Our concepts of ballot-box democracy may need to be modified to produce strong governments capable of making difficult decisions, particularly in terms of safeguarding the global environment that this transition will require and whose results are often not immediately apparent."

Malcolm X, in conversation with Coretta Scott King (February 1965), as quoted in My life with MLK, Jr. (1969), page 256
Attributed

Holy “Mama” – An Interview with Javier Botet https://thedodgy.com/2013/11/22/holy-mama-an-interview-with-javier-botet/ (November 22, 2013)

Vanity Fair (1993) http://www.pfeiffertheface.com/Mag_1993-09_VanityFair.htm
Context: I had a big mouth, and I used to mouth off to my mother all the time. But I'd make sure my father wasn't in earshot, because he'd let me have it. I was very strong-willed, very stubborn, and fairly dramatic, I guess. I remember my mother calling me a drama queen when I would be carrying on: 'Here's my little actress.' And I was a real tomboy. I wasn't a terribly feminine little girl. I never thought I was attractive to boys; I remember when the first boy liked me, I couldn't believe it. All the little girls with ringlets and crinoline dresses were the ones the boys liked. I was always beating them up — why should they like me? I was always the biggest girl in the class, and if somebody wanted someone beaten up, they'd come and get me. I was the school bully. No wonder I played Catwoman. It all comes full circle.

20 April 2013.
A9 TV addresses, 2013
Context: The advocators of peace, the proponents of love should be much more determined, much more strong willed. They might try to deter us from our path, deviate us from our way but we should continue with determination and strong will.

David Henrie Interview: "There’s Someone out There That’s Got My Eye, but We’re Just Seeing Where It Goes" (26 January 2015) Smashing Interviews Magazine https://smashinginterviews.com/interviews/actors/david-henrie-interview-theres-someone-out-there-thats-got-my-eye-but-were-just-seeing-where-it-goes

Middlemarch (1871)
Context: What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other? I cannot be indifferent to the troubles of a man who advised me in my trouble, and attended me in my illness.

Source: Tracks