The arts have always been an important ingredient to the health of a nation, but we haven’t gotten there yet.

Jones’s remark frames the arts not as a luxury but as civic infrastructure—something that sustains a country’s “health” by cultivating empathy, shared memory, and public imagination. The concessive turn (“but we haven’t gotten there yet”) suggests a gap between the arts’ proven value and the level of support, access, or institutional commitment they actually receive. Read this way, the quote functions as both praise and admonition: it affirms the arts’ long-standing role in national well-being while criticizing contemporary underinvestment or uneven cultural priorities. The “nation” language also implies that arts policy and public funding are part of the moral and political health of society, not merely private entertainment.