The real wisdom here isn't about showing anyone up—it's that obsessing over vindication wastes the very energy you need for achievement. When you're genuinely absorbed in building something worthwhile, the people who doubted you simply become irrelevant background noise, which is far more deflating to them than any confrontation could be. A colleague passed over for promotion who then becomes indispensable elsewhere doesn't need to announce their success; their former boss already knows it, and that knowledge stings far more than any boast. Sinatra understood that the best counterargument to criticism is simply moving beyond the critics' reach entirely.