Plato Is My Friend Aristotle Is

Newton wrote this Latin motto — Amicus Plato amicus Aristoteles magis amica veritas — at the head of his student notebook, the Quaestiones Quaedam Philosophicae ("Certain Philosophical Questions"), around 1664 while at Trinity College, Cambridge. The phrase, rooted in a classical Latin saying, declared his intention to follow empirical truth rather than the authority of ancient philosophers. The notebook marks the moment Newton began reading widely beyond the Aristotelian curriculum — encountering René Descartes and the new mechanical philosophers — and charting his own intellectual course.