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"Texas has a lot of challenges, but if I choose to run I will talk about opening democracy to mainstream Texans and not just to a closed circle of entrenched ideologues."
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"Democracy can exist only in the countries where people are brave! Coward nations always live under the authoritarian regimes!"

"I'm much more attracted personally to governments going their full term. It's very hard to have a fixed term election I know with ah... a parliamentary democracy, but I've always had an instinct to say there should be a fixed term."

"Change represents the real spirit of democracy and the real America."

"Another tendency, which is extremely natural to democratic nations and extremely dangerous, is that which leads them to despise and undervalue the rights of private persons. The attachment which men feel to a right, and the respect which they display for it, is generally proportioned to its importance, or to the length of time during which they have enjoyed it. The rights of private persons amongst democratic nations are commonly of small importance, of recent growth, and extremely precarious; the consequence is that they are often sacrificed without regret, and almost always violated without remorse."

"Self-government is in inverse ratio to numbers. The larger the constituency, the less the value of any particular vote. When he is merely one of millions, the individual elector feels himself to be impotent, a negligible quantity. The candidates he has voted into office are far away, at the top of the pyramid of power. Theoretically they are the servants of the people; but in fact it is the servants who give orders and the people, far off at the base of the great pyramid, who must obey."

"Right-to-life groups won't fund us because we're Democrats."

"Democracy functions best when we have an active citizenry."
Explore more quotes by Chris Bell

"I have no problem with battling for a position. I have no problem trying to beat somebody out. It's a sport, competition, so I'm used to it."

"So many people are accustomed to written information that you really have to have a few more bells and whistles in this day and age."

"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Don't store unnecessary data, keep an eye on what's happening, and don't take unnecessary risks."

"I think that people need to have the courage of their convictions and not be trying to fool people into thinking that they've changed overnight."

"I filed the ethics complaint against Tom DeLay not because I'm a Democrat and he's a Republican or even because he drew me out of my congressional seat but because he engaged in corruption to further his plans to disenfranchise voters in Texas."

"I guess what bothers me so much about what I now see going on in both Washington and in Texas is an effort to keep people from finding out about the mistakes of lawmakers and then when they're uncovered, an effort to fool people and pretend there was nothing wrong."

"The American people expect public servants to be able to police themselves. But instead of designing a system to enforce ethical conduct, Tom Delay and his cohorts have implemented a self protection system. Obviously, it wasn't good for democracy."
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