Newton: “but truth is my greater friend”

In his enjoyable biography of Isaac Newton, James Gleick recounts how the young Newton, in his notebook, “borrowed from Aristotle’s justification for dissenting from his teacher. Aristotle had said, ‘Plato is my friend, but truth my greater friend.’ Newton inserted Aristotle’s name in sequence: Amicus Plato amicus Aristoteles magis amica veritas.” (Paperback edition, ch. 2, p. 26)