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It truly is a very difficult question to answer as the best telescope is basically the one that you're going to use the most. If you have a small refractor you can be limited to larger objects in the sky. If you have a huge telescope, it can be wonderful at smaller objects but taking an image of Orion Nebula would end up becoming a 1000 image mosaic! For planetary you could be better with a 4-6" refractor with a 5x barlow.
As has been mentioned, the telescope and camera combination makes all the difference! As an example, most would argue that a 11" F/3 would flog my Meade 10" F/10 with a 0.63 focal reducer. If they use a KAF8300, a VERY popular and good camera and I use a Alta F77, due to the pixel sizes (5.4 vs 12) and QE peak (56% vs 96%), the second setup is nearly twice as fast! Of course, it is the difference between 8.3MP vs 0.26MP.
Furthermore, if you're just doing AP then the first setup would be better, albeit needing nearly twice the amount of exposure time to reach the same magnitude, the extra FOV is more than worth it. Of course, for scientific analysis, the second setup is probably going to be okay even with the 512x512 sensor.
To sum it all up, the best optical system is essentially whatever you're planning on doing with it.
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