" a man named Aristocles, whose very broad shoulders got him the nickname Plato. One of the most influential minds in human history – Alfred North Whitehead, himself no intellectual slouch, characterized all of Western philosophy as a series of footnotes to Plato8 – he played a central role in redirecting philosophy away from arbitrary speculations about the nature of existence, and toward close attention to how human beings know what exists and what doesn’t. Even if you’ve never read a word Plato wrote, you use concepts he invented practically every time you think. "

― John Michael Greer , The Blood of the Earth: An essay on Magic and Peak Oil