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In Australian English, the phrase life was not meant to be easy, and its variants, have been associated with Malcolm Fraser (1930-2015), Leader of the Liberal Party of Australia from March 1975 to March 1983, and Prime Minister of Australia from November 1975 to March 1983.
This phrase occurred, for example, in the following from Life is sweet. Just ask Paulie and Big Pussy, by David Dale, published in The Sydney Morning Herald (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia) of Saturday 18th August 2001 [Spectrum – Weekend Edition: page 20, column 4]:
Over the past four decades, Italians have transformed us from anxious Anglos to mellow Mediterraneans, successfully refuting Malcolm Fraser’s summary of the ethic on which this country was founded: “Life wasn’t meant to be easy”.
—Cf. also the synonymous phrase life is not all beer and skittles.
These are, in chronological order, the earliest occurrences that I have found of the phrase life was not meant to be easy and variants that are associated with Malcolm Fraser:
1-: From an interview of Malcolm Fraser, by Evan Williams, published in The Sydney Morning Herald (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia) of Tuesday 2nd December 1969 [page 2, column 5]—Malcolm Fraser, then Minister for Defence, had taken over Nareen, the family ranch in western Victoria:
Deep down, you feel, farming is still his first love […].
It is as if politics were not so much a love or a mission as a call of duty—a sacrifice for the good of the country. “I used to feel that if people have an opportunity to work, not merely for themselves, but for the community or the country, they should do so. Growing up and taking over the property, which is what I liked doing more than anything else, just seemed to make life too easy—and I don’t think life is really meant to be easy. I was wrong in thinking that politics would fit in well with being a farmer. Even as a private member I did no work on the farm. I would ring up the manager once or twice a week and get down there when I could—but it’s even more difficult now.”
2-: From an interview of Malcolm Fraser, by Cameron Forbes, published in The Age (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia) of Monday 2nd August 1971 [page 9, column 8]—Malcolm Fraser was then a mere backbencher:
I asked him about two statements in his recent Deakin lecture: “Life is not meant to be easy”, and “We need a rugged society”.
Rugged society (echoes of Lee Kuan Yew 1): what is a rugged society? A hard life? Couldn’t people say: you’re sitting at Nareen, a member of the narrow affluent society—squatocracy would have been the early term—you can afford to talk about rugged societies?
[…] The question stayed with Malcolm Fraser as we drove across the wide, green acres of Nareen. “You asked about the rugged society and me having all this.
“Well, one answer might be that I did not have to leave all this and go to Canberra in the first place.”
1 Lee Kuan Yew (1923-2015) was the first Prime Minister of Singapore from 1959 to 1990. The following explanations are from Navigating the Future Together as a Rugged Singaporean Citizenry, by Dhevarajan Devadas, published by the Institute of Policy Studies on Tuesday 12th March 2019:
In his 1966 National Day Address, on the eve of the first anniversary of Singapore’s separation from Malaysia, founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew said he hoped to build a “rugged society” where Singaporeans accepted the sacrifices needed to become a well-educated and productive workforce to generate critical economic growth.
3-: From Noel Hawken looks at Australia and Australians, published in the Papua New Guinea Post-Courier (Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea) of Thursday 27th March 1975 [page 18, title and column 1]:
‘Life is not meant to be easy’—Fraser
The election of a wealthy Victorian grazier and Oxford graduate, Mr Malcolm Fraser, 45, as the new leader of the Federal Liberal parliamentary party could lead to an Australian general election this year.
[…]
Mr Fraser is an advocate of “strong” government, and has said that he has been influenced by the American philosopher Ayn Rand 2, who believes in “rugged individualism”.
“We need a rugged society,” Mr Fraser once said, when a Federal Minister. “Life is not meant to be easy”.
2 This refers to Ayn Rand, the pen name of the Russian-born U.S. author Alice O’Connor (born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum – 1905-1982), who promoted individualism and laissez-faire capitalism.
It seems that Malcolm Fraser borrowed the saying life was not meant to be easy from the following passage from Back to Methuselah. A Metabiological Pentateuch (New York: Brentano’s, 1921), by the Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) [Part 5: As Far as Thought Can Reach: A.D. 31,920, page 281]:
The He-Ancient. Children, listen.
Acis [striding down the steps to the bench and seating himself next Ecrasia] What! Even the Ancient wants to make a speech! Give it mouth, O Sage.
Strephon. For heaven’s sake dont [sic] tell us that the earth was once inhabited by Ozymandiases and Cleopatras. Life is hard enough for us as it is.
The He-Ancient. Life is not meant to be easy, my child; but take courage: it can be delightful.
John Stevens mentioned this borrowing in News Diary, published in The Age (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia) of Thursday 5th May 1977 [page 2, column 4]:
Mr. Fraser has short-changed us again. The actual quote is, “Life is not meant to be easy, my child; but take courage: it can be delightful”. (He-Ancient in George Bernard Shaw’s Back to Methuselah).
It seems that Malcolm Fraser himself declared that he had borrowed the phrase from Shaw’s Back to Methuselah—at least according to the following from Column 8, published in The Sydney Morning Herald (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia) of Monday 1st June 1981 [page 1, column 8]:
George Bernard Shaw would have loved the joke. The Prime Minister’s famous one-line philosophy—“Life wasn’t meant to be easy”—is from Shaw’s play Methuselah. Yesterday, Mr Fraser let the beleaguered Liberal Party executive into the secret. The quotation continues: “But take courage, it can be delightful.” The optimistic Shaw was, of course, a socialist.
However, George Bernard Shaw did not coin the phrase life was not meant to be easy. This phrase occurred, for example, in the following from a transcript of the sermon that the Rev. John Hunter delivered at Salem Chapel, York, Yorkshire, England, on Sunday 29th July 1877—transcript published in The York Herald (York, Yorkshire, England) of Monday 30th July 1877 [page 7, column 4]:
The excuse of many people who did not give freely was that they wanted to get money to leave to their children. That he called a mischievous and vicious error for to inherit money more frequently conduced to evil than to good. If they gave their children the best education they could, and taught them to procure the necessaries of life, they did all they were required to do, and in his opinion all that they ought to do for their children. Life was not meant to be easy and comfortable, but was meant for developing the faculties and for training in all things excellent and good, and they defeated the ends of life by encouraging idleness and selfishness.
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