We may not do as other parties, because we are not like the others. We are – and this cannot be too often repeated – separated from all other parties… - Wilhelm Liebknecht

It is a bourgeois feeling to overvalue the possession of representatives. In representation as in money there is power – power over others. Whoever places the purity and the greatness of our party above all else, for him representatives have value only in so far as they serve to give expression to the power and extent of Social Democracy. What do ten, what do a hundred representatives signify, when our escutcheon has lost its gloss through their acquisition? The value of a representative is small. But the value of the integrity of our party is immeasurable. In it rests our strength. As with the shorn hair, that signified his manhood’s honor, the strength of disappeared, so the strength of our party would cease if we allowed the bourgeois s to flatter away our most precious jewel and the roots of our triumphal strength – the party purity, the party honor.

This is not an end, but only a means to an end.

If the way to hell is paved with good intentions, the way to defeat is paved with illusions.