Success Quote by Alice Foote MacDougall

MacDougall’s line is a piece of entrepreneurial alchemy: it takes a word that terrifies people and tries to melt it down into something optional. The blunt opening, “I simply don’t believe,” frames failure not as an external verdict but as a superstition you can refuse to practice. That’s a writerly move with a businessperson’s agenda: redefine the terms and you reshape the behavior.

The subtext is equal parts empowerment and provocation. By insisting failure “in itself… doesn’t exist,” she’s not denying that projects collapse or money runs out; she’s denying the moral stamp we attach to those outcomes. “We create it” shifts the locus of control inward, turning failure into narrative rather than fact. That’s persuasive because it gives readers a role other than defendant. If failure is self-authored, then persistence becomes a form of revision: you’re not defeated, you’re editing.

Context matters here. MacDougall wasn’t floating in abstract optimism; she built a public life in the early 20th century, when women’s ambition was routinely treated as an overreach. In that environment, “failure” isn’t neutral data - it’s a social weapon, a way to police who gets to try. Her phrasing reads like a preemptive strike: don’t internalize the verdict, don’t help your critics by doing their job for them.

It’s also a hard-edged credo: if we “make ourselves fail,” then responsibility can’t be outsourced. The line works because it’s both comforting and demanding - a pep talk with teeth.