"...there's no reason why scholarship can't be as seriously playful as bubble-blowing."
Jonathon Keats
Artist, Philosopher
Jonathon Keats was a prominent English Romantic poet known for his vivid imagery and exploration of beauty, emotion, and human experience.
- Born
- January 1, 1970
- Quotes
- 63
- Rank
- #660
About Jonathon Keats
Jonathon Keats — Life and Legacy
Jonathon Keats, an influential English Romantic poet, is celebrated for his profound exploration of beauty and human emotion. His distinctive works, such as 'Ode to a Nightingale' and 'Endymion,' delve into the complexities of existence, often reflecting on the transient nature of life and art. Keats's philosophy centers around the idea that beauty and truth are inseparable, as expressed in his famous line, 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty.' This perspective reveals his belief that art serves as a gateway to understanding deeper emotional truths. Keats's quotes often reflect his internal struggles and the tension between aspiration and reality. For instance, his assertion that 'A thing of beauty is a joy forever' encapsulates his view that beauty transcends time, offering lasting joy amidst life's impermanence. This emphasis on beauty as a source of solace and inspiration challenges the notion of art as merely decorative, positioning it as a vital aspect of human experience. Today, Keats's insights resonate deeply, as they invite readers to confront their own emotions and the fleeting moments of beauty in their lives. His work continues to inspire those seeking to understand the intricate relationship between art, emotion, and the human condition.
Quote collection
Jonathon Keats quotes (page 1 of 4)
63 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"I would argue that search has made the world a better place. It has done so for reasons that arbitrarily could completely change that - not arbitrarily at all but to completely change how that plays out based upon the needs of profitability. So it's totally unreliable and it has many layers nested underneath that of many ulterior motives nested underneath it."
"I studied philosophy in school, became disgruntled by the fact that it was a way to have a very interesting conversation with very few people about very few things in very narrow terms and yet still believed (and still believe today) that there was something that I was getting myself involved in when I said I wanted to study philosophy."
"I don't have a cell phone. I am not a Luddite."
"I don't know whether what I do is art. But making things out in the world and having as many conversations as possible."
"I select my technology based on what I need and I also don't take up what I don't feel that I need."
"I think that as a society as well, we need to be smart about what technologies we take up and how construe progress."
"We are not evolved really very well to be able to understand or to be able to work with and grapple with technologies that we have."
"[Buckminster] Fuller was an independent operator coming up with these madcap ways of combining things with absolutely no strings attached and the fact that world changing now is happening within the corporation by and large, and that disruption is ironically what corporations do."
"On the other hand, the way in which that car fit into this whole very roundabout way of attempting to solve the problem of what - the problem that [Buckminster Fuller] perceived as being the cause of his daughter's death and meningitis. I mean how you get from your daughter dying from meningitis to making a car with three wheels and saying that it's like a bird and a fish. That really is amazing."
"To me, the reason to write about [Buckminster] Fuller is because I think that he has ideas that are incredibly pertinent."
"First of all, [Buckminster Fuller's] identification of the problems that are all that much more pertinent, all that much more pressing in the world today than in his own lifetime from sustainability in terms of the environment to income inequality."
"All sorts of problems and the interconnectedness between them that [Buckminster Fuller] was able to perceive sometimes rightly, often wrongly, always interestingly and also the fact that he was looking at solutions often that were not feasible in his own time but potentially could be applied today."
"The interesting thing writing about [Buckminster] Fuller is really to attempt to resurrect all of that and to do so for a new generation that has not grown up with him."
"I didn't grow up with [Buckminster Fuller]. I never met him. I was once close to meeting him as a child at a ski resort one summer. He died in 1983. Only in 1999 or so, 2000, when I was working as an editor at San Francisco Magazine, did I really come back around to that name because Stanford University had just acquired the archive."
"I became really absorbed but again I was at that point - and I still remain today - an outsider who has no interest in becoming an insider, let alone in what that insider perspective on [Buckminster Fuller] has come to be and come to represent."
"Writing a book about [Buckminster Fuller] in the sense of deciding how much to - how much biographically to gloss over and how much I can leave out is relatively easy as it is because the true believers already know everything. They know a lot of things that are not true and they know a lot of things that I thought were (and seems there's very good evidence not to believe) and therefore, my starting point was I think to tell his myth because that's what grabbed me."
"Just enough of that to be able to give the reader a sense of skepticism that all - it seemed like all that was necessary. I don't really care. But what I do care about is what was happening within the realm of automobiles at the time that [Buckminster Fuller] invented his Dymaxion car because that is really relevant."
"[Buckminster Fuller] started talking about it far enough afterwards, an audience that was far enough from when they - when the air flow and the Zephyr and these cars in the time period that were made by mainstream automakers. It was far enough in the future, far enough after that point that nobody really bothered to fact-check."
"There were other auto manufacturers that were confabulating as much as [Buckminster Fuller] was, making claims about how cars resembled this or that aspect of nature."