Always be smarter than the people who hire you. — Lena Horne

Always be smarter than the people who hire you.

Author: Lena Horne

Insight: There's something quietly subversive about this advice, especially coming from someone who navigated the entertainment industry during Jim Crow. The obvious reading is about competence—don't take a job where you're the least capable person in the room. But there's more to it than that. The trickier wisdom here is about power dynamics. When you're smarter than your employer, you're harder to manipulate, easier to see through, and less likely to accept bad terms without understanding them. You can spot when you're being underpaid or underutilized. You know when someone's taking credit for your work or when a "opportunity" is actually exploitation dressed up in flattering language. Intelligence becomes a form of self-protection, especially for people historically denied it. This doesn't mean arrogance or showing off. It means staying sharp, asking questions, reading the fine print, and keeping your own counsel. It means not letting anyone make you feel small enough to accept less than you're worth. In today's gig economy and endless performance reviews, that clarity is still radical—knowing your own value so well that no one else's judgment can shake it.