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Is there any man--no matter how spiritual or how well-meaning he may be--who could safely be trusted with absolute power over other men? It is this, along with other and more important observations, that has given me the courage to reject all spiritual authoritarianism. Some defect or some evil is mixed into each one of us. Imperfection is our natural lot here on earth. In a well-varied experience of my own species and in fairly wide wanderings through this world, I have never met a perfectly good, perfectly wise, and perfectly balanced man. That is to say, I must now lament with Confucius: "A sage I have no hope of ever seeing."

-- Notebooks Category 25: World-Mind in Individual Mind > Chapter 4 : The Sage Part 2 > # 377