The standard reading of Plato’s Laws seems to take for granted that the prooimia, or preambles to the laws, are to take effect primarily through being read and re-read by the inhabitants. In challenging this reading, I suggest that the workings of the preambles is much more oral, indirect, and complex than any mere reiteration of settled phrases. The role of the preambles is in several contexts best characterized as a resource for dialogue rather than as a predefined spell (although they are that too). This is to say that the moral development of the Magnesians is a political process that to an important degree takes place in modes of direct inter-personal relations of care and friendliness.