To make the soul as good as possible, and to prepare her for communion with the Gods in another world by communion with divine virtue in this, is the end of life.

If the Republic is far superior to the Laws in form and style, and perhaps in reach of thought, the Laws leave on the mind of the modern reader much more strongly the impression of a struggle against evil, and an enthusiasm for human improvement.

When Plato says that he must carry out that part of his ideal which is practicable, he does not appear to have reflected that part of an ideal cannot be detached from the whole.
The great defect of both his constitutions is the fixedness which he seeks to impress upon them.

He had seen the Athenian empire, almost within the limits of his own life, wax and wane, but he never seems to have asked himself what would happen if, a century from the time at which he was writing, the Greek character should have as much changed as in the century which had preceded.

He fails to perceive that the greater part of the political life of a nation is not that which is given them by their legislators, but that which they give themselves.