Be he a dictator holding the fortunes of a nation in the hollow of his hand, or a despised outcast, degraded, destitute, and sin-steeped, none is too high to find a place in the illuminate's orbit of contact, just as none is too low. For the first virtue of self-knowledge is the inner understanding of others, the intellectual sympathy with them.

-- Notebooks Category 25: World-Mind in Individual Mind > Chapter 3: The Sage > # 332