Like most of you, I've viewed through thousands of telescopes. But not all of them, obviously. So, from all I've gleaned from personal experience and reading about the experience of others, my opinion is that the best scopes of their type of all time seem to be:
-GOOD 4 inch Unitrons and other long focal ratio achromats..
-Aries 10 inch Maksutovs
-Takahashi TOA 130 refractors.
-Obsession Newtonians.
-Leitz 1980s Trinovid binoculars
-Zeiss APQ 4 inch f10 telescopes
-Celestron / Vixen 4 inch fluorites
-AP 160 175 apos
-Ceravolo 8 inch Mak-Newts