“Until philosophers are kings, cities will never have rest from their evils.”
Republic 473d
Plato wrote dialogues in which Socrates argues with generals, poets and politicians. In the Republic he imagines justice in the soul and the ideal city, and closes with the Myth of Er, a story of judgement after death.
He founded the Academy in Athens, the first sustained school of higher learning in the West, and taught there for forty years. His Timaeus gave the Middle Ages and Renaissance a philosophical account of the cosmos.
Legacy
His influence is so pervasive that later thinkers are often described as footnotes to him.