Song lyrics, Hounds of Love (1985), The Ninth Wave
“Long story, but the point is that if you hear hoofbeats in the distance, your first guess is that they’re horses, not zebras. And you’re hearing hoofbeats and jumping straight to unicorns.”
“So what are you saying?”
“I’m saying let’s go see if we can find some horses or zebras before we start a unicorn hunt.”
Source: Nemesis Games (2015), Chapter 8 (p. 86)
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Daniel Abraham 141
speculative fiction writer from the United States 1969Related quotes
Part 5 “Coming Home”, Chapter 3 (p. 179)
Against Infinity (1983)
“If you're going to say what you want to say, you're going to hear what you don't want to hear.”
Source: The Insufferable Gaucho
“What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.”
Variant: Your actions speak so loudly, I can not hear what you are saying.
"Theme from English B"
Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951)
“You don't understand music: you hear it. So hear me with your whole body.”
Source: The Stream of Life
Social Aims
Sometimes condensed to "What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say."
1870s, Society and Solitude (1870), Books, Letters and Social Aims http://www.rwe.org/comm/index.php?option=com_content&task=category§ionid=5&id=74&Itemid=149 (1876)