Let me take the liberty of rephrasing the question slightly. Does the mathematical community put undue emphasis on accomplishing something "difficult," and thereby undervalue certain highly original theorems and conjectures? I think that the answer is yes.

I have frequently encountered mathematicians who make snap decisions that some fact "looks easy to prove." Sometimes, that judgment is way off, but it's hard to talk them out of it except by presenting evidence that a lot of people tried to prove it and failed (and even then, they may just conclude that all those people were just idiots). This means that if you come up with a highly original theorem or conjecture for which there is little or no prior evidence that it is hard, you may have a difficult time getting it published or otherwise granted respect.

To be fair, it's true that if not a lot of people have tried to prove something, then indeed there's not much evidence that it's hard, and it may be evidence that the statement in question is not that interesting (otherwise, why wouldn't someone else have already been led to consider it?). However, I find it somewhat ironic that the more original an idea is and the simpler the proof, the less respect it tends to get. In official statements, we claim to value originality and simplicity of proofs, and we disavow the view that mathematics is a contest to see who is the "smartest," but our actual behavior belies our words.

To mitigate this tendency, I try to encourage people to be suspicious of their own instincts that something is easy. By the way, we see this sort of thing here on MO quite frequently, where someone instantly votes to close a question as being too trivial, without having the slightest idea how to answer the question (which often turns out to be rather interesting and difficult).