Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?
Much help in this endeavor goes to Thomas Parker (Grumpy) < tp001b@uhura.cc.rochester.edu >, whoever he may be, for the "Canonical Chicken" list. I've added every additional response I can find, including from a list compiled by Shawn OSteen.
Why did the chicken cross the road?
Aristotle:
To actualize its potential.
Tom Arnold:
Did the chicken fart when it crossed the road?
Roseanne Barr:
Urrrrrp. What chicken?
Roland Barthes:
The chicken wanted to expose the myth of the road.
Ludwig von Beethoven:
What? Speak up.
Yogi Berra:
When he saw the fork in the road, he took it.
The Bible:
And God came down from the Heavens, and He said unto the Chicken, "Thou shalt cross the road." And the Chicken crossed the road, and there was much rejoicing.
Joe Biden:
Why did the chicken do the ... thing in the ... you know the rest.
Bill the Cat:
Oop. Ack.
Tony Blair:
I don't know ... whatever the American president said.
Leopold Bloom:
Wonder why chickens cross roads. Must be some law. Migration maybe. Mrs Marion Bloom.
Molly Bloom:
the chicken crossed the road well Poldy I dont know why why do you worry about such stupid bloody things O speaking of stupid bloody things here it comes again damn it its only been three weeks I wonder is there something wrong with me yes
Bono:
Because the street had no name.
Jose Bove:
It desired to join me in protesting McDonald's Chicken McNuggets.
Marlon Brando:
To prove to himself that he coulda been a contender.
Marlon Brando (revisited):
One of my friends made him an offer he couldn't refuse.
Pat Buchanan:
To steal a job from a decent, hard-working American.
Buddha:
If you ask this question, you deny your own chicken-nature.
George Bush:
To face a kinder, gentler thousand points of headlights.
George W. Bush:
I don't believe we need to get the chickens across the road. I say give the road to the chickens and let them decide. The government needs to let go of strangling the chickens so they can get across the road.
George W. Bush (revisited):
We don't really care why the chicken crossed the road. We just want to know if the chicken is on our side of the road or not. The chicken is either with us or against us. There is no middle ground here.
Julius Caesar:
To come, to see, to conquer.
Albert Camus:
It doesn't matter; the chicken's actions have no meaning except to him.
Candide:
To cultivate its garden.
Fidel Castro:
To continue the revolution.
Dick Cheney:
Chickens are big-time because they have wings. They could fly if they wanted to. Chickens don't want to cross the road. They don't need help crossing the road. In fact, I'm not interested in crossing the road myself.
Dick Cheney (revisited):
To get to an undisclosed location.
Dick Cheney (take three):
Where's my gun?
Bill Clinton:
That depends. What was she wearing?
Bill Clinton (revisited):
It all depends on what your definition of "chicken" is.
Bill Clinton (take three):
I did not cross the road with that chicken.
Hillary Clinton:
What difference at this point does it make why the chicken crossed the road?
Jed Clampet:
Let me tell ya a story 'bout a chicken I know
The crazy fool thing was always walkin' 'cross the road
But then one day I was drivin' in the truck
When all of a sudden I heard a big thump!
(Road kill, that is. Good eatin'. Fine food.)
Joseph Conrad:
Mistah Chicken, he dead.
Anderson Cooper:
We have reason to believe there is a chicken, but we have not yet been allowed to have access to the other side of the road.
Howard Cosell:
It may very well have been one of the most astonishing events to grace the annals of history. An historic, unprecedented avian biped with the temerity to attempt such an herculean achievement formerly relegated to homo sapien pedestrians is truly a remarkable occurence.
e.e. cummings:
my dear old etcetera
chicken during the last
war crossed some roads
he never would have
crossed before ...
Salvador Dali:
Fish.
Charles Darwin:
It was the logical next step after coming down from the trees.
Charles Darwin (revisited):
Chickens, over great periods of time, have been naturally selected in such a way that they are now genetically dispositioned to cross roads.
King David:
O Lord, why dost the chicken cross the road? And why art the chicken hawks beset around it? Surely in vain the road is crossed in the sight of any predator.
Thomas Dequincy:
Because it ran out of opium.
Jacques Derrida:
What is the difference? The chicken was merely deferring from one side of the road to other. And how do we get the idea of the chicken in the first place? Does it exist outside of language?
Rene Descartes:
It had sufficient reason to believe it was dreaming anyway.
Emily Dickinson:
Because it could not stop for death.
Bob Dylan:
How many roads must one chicken cross?
John Edward:
In order to connect with those chickens who had gone before him, I channeled his energy so he could "cross over".
Albert Einstein:
Did the chicken really cross the road, or did the road move beneath the chicken? It depends on your frame of reference.
TS Eliot:
Weialala leia / Wallala leialala.
TS Eliot (revisited):
Do I dare to cross the road?
Ralph Waldo Emerson:
It didn't cross the road; it transcended it.
Epicurus:
For fun.
Paul Erdos:
It was forced to do so by the chicken-hole principle.
M.C. Escher:
That depends on which plane of reality the chicken was on at the time.
Jerry Falwell:
Because the chicken was gay! Isn't it obvious? Can't you people see the plain truth in front of your face? The chicken was going to the "other side". That's what "they" call it - the "other side". Yes, my friends, that chicken is gay. And, if you eat that chicken, you will become gay too. I say we boycott all chickens until we sort out this abomination that the liberal media whitewashes with seemingly harmless phrases like "the other side". That chicken should not be free to cross the road. It's as plain and simple as that.
Louis Farrakhan:
The road, you will see, represents the black man. The chicken crossed the "black man" in order to trample him and keep him down.
Basil Fawlty:
Oh, don't mind that chicken. It's from Barcelona.
Pierre de Fermat:
I just don't have room here to give the full explanation ...
Gerald R. Ford:
It probably fell from an airplane and couldn't stop its forward momentum.
Gerald R. Ford (revisited):
To look for the golf ball I lost in the woods over there.
Michel Foucault:
It did so because the dicourse of crossing the road left it no choice-the police state was oppressing it.
Sigmund Freud:
The chicken obviously was female and obviously interpreted the pole on which the crosswalk sign was mounted as a phallic symbol of which she was envious, selbstverständlich.
Sigmund Freud (revisited):
The fact that you thought the chicken crossed the road reveals your underlying sexual insecurity.
Robert Frost:
To cross the road less traveled by.
Zsa Zsa Gabor:
It probably crossed to get a better look at my legs, which, thank goodness, are good, dahling.
Bill Gates:
I have just released the new Chicken 2000, which will both cross roads and balance your checkbook, though when it divides 3 by 2 it gets 1.49999999999.
Bill Gates (upgraded):
I have just released eChicken2014, which will not only cross roads, but will lay eggs, file your important documents and balance your checkbook. Internet Explorer is an integral part of eChicken2014. This new platform is much more stable and will never reboot.
Dirk Gently, Holistic Detective:
I'm not exactly sure why, but right now I've got a horse in my bathroom.
Gilligan:
The traffic started getting rough;
The chicken had to cross.
If not for the plumage of its peerless tail
The chicken would be lost,
The chicken would be lost!
Johann Friedrich von Goethe:
The eternal hen-principle made it do it.
Al Gore:
I fight for the chickens and I am fighting for the chickens right now. I will not give up on the chickens crossing the road! I will fight for the chickens and I will not disappoint them.
Al Gore (revisited):
Because I invented the chicken, of course.
Nancy Grace:
That chicken crossed the road because he's guilty! You can see it in his eyes and the way he walks.
Grandpa:
In my day, we didn't ask why the chicken crossed the road. Someone told us that the chicken had crossed the road, and that was good enough for us.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel:
It was part of the dialectic.
Ernest Hemingway:
To die. In the rain. Alone.
Werner Heisenberg:
We are not sure which side of the road the chicken was on, but it was moving very fast.
Adolf Hitler:
It needed Lebensraum.
David Hume:
Out of custom and habit.
Saddam Hussein:
This was an unprovoked act of rebellion and we were quite justified in dropping 50 tons of nerve gas on it.
Saddam Hussein (revisited):
It is the Mother of all Chickens.
Lee Iacocca:
It found a better car, which was on the other side of the road.
Thomas Jefferson:
It was endowed by its Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness Across the Road.
John Paul Jones:
It has not yet begun to cross!
James Joyce:
Once upon a time a nicens little chicken named baby tuckoo crossed the road and met a moocow coming down...
James Joyce (revisited):
To forge in the smithy of its soul the uncreated conscience of its race.
Carl Jung:
The confluence of events in the cultural gestalt necessitated that individual chickens cross roads at this historical juncture, and, therefore, synchronicitously brought such occurrences into being.
Immanuel Kant:
Because it was a duty.
Immanuel Kant (revisited):
The chicken, being an autonomous being, chose to cross the road of its own free will.
Immanuel Kant (take three):
Though I am a respected philosopher of the Enlightenment, and though I know why the chicken did cross the road, the answer will remain forever unclear to you, the reader, seeing as how I, a German intellectual, have written the answer in a clearly incomprehensible, extended fashion, which neither you nor any literate person has yet figured out how to decipher.
John Kerry:
Although I voted to let the chicken cross the road, I am now against it! It was the wrong road to cross, and I was misled about the chicken's intentions. I am not for it now, and will remain against it.
Martin Luther King:
I envision a world where all chickens will be free to cross roads without having their motives called into question.
James Tiberius Kirk:
To boldly go where no chicken has gone before.
Jacques Lacan:
Because of its desire for *object a*.
Lassie:
To help Timmy, who had fallen down a well.
Stan Laurel:
I'm sorry, Ollie. It escaped when I opened the run.
Timothy Leary:
Because that's the only kind of trip the Establishment would let him take.
Leda:
Are you sure it wasn't Zeus dressed up as a chicken? He's into that kind of thing, you know.
Gottfried von Leibniz:
In this best possible world, the road was made for it to cross.
Joseph Lieberman:
I believe that every chicken has the right to worship his or her God in his or her own way. Crossing the road is a spiritual journey and no chicken should be denied the right to cross the road in his or her own way.
Abraham Lincoln:
To emancipate the chickens that have been held in captivity on the other side.
John Locke:
Becuase he was exercising his natural right to life, liberty and property.
H. P. Lovecraft:
To escape the eldritch, cthonic, rugose, polypous, indescribably horrible abomination not from our space-time continuum.
Macchiavelli:
The point is that the chicken crossed the road. Who cares why? The ends of crossing the road justify whatever motive there was.
Paul de Man:
The chicken did not really cross the road because one side and the other are not really opposites in the first place.
Paul de Man: (uncovered after his death)
So no one would find out it wrote for a collaborationist Belgian newspaper during the early years of World War II.
Manuel:
Is not a chicken. Is Siberian hamster.
Groucho Marx:
Chicken? What's all this talk about chicken? Why, I had an uncle who thought he was a chicken. My aunt almost divorced him, but we needed the eggs.
Karl Marx:
To escape the bourgeois middle-class struggle.
Karl Marx (revisited):
It was an historical inevitability.
John McCain:
My friends, the chicken crossed the road because he recognized the need to engage in cooperation and dialogue with all the chickens on the other side of the road.
Leonard H. "Bones" McCoy:
Dammit, Jim, I'm a doctor, not a chicken farmer!
Bob and Doug McKenzie:
To get to the hockey rink, eh?
Gregor Mendel:
To get various strains of roads.
John Milton:
To justify the ways of God to men.
Moses:
Know ye that it is unclean to eat the chicken that has crossed the road, and that the chicken that crosseth the road doth so for its own preservation.
Fox Mulder:
It was a government conspiracy.
Ralph Nader:
Chickens are misled into believing there is a road by the evil tire makers. Chickens aren't ignorant, but our society pays tire makers to create the need for these roads and then lures chickens into believing there is an advantage to crossing them. Down with the roads, up with chickens.
Alfred E. Neuman:
What? Me worry?
Sir Isaac Newton:
Chickens at rest tend to stay at rest. Chickens in motion tend to cross the road.
Jack Nicholson:
'Cause it (censored) wanted to. That's the (censored) reason.
Leslie Nielsen:
It was serious. And don't call it Shirley.
Friedrich Nietzsche:
Because if you gaze too long across the Road, the Road gazes also across you.
Friedrich Nietzsche (revisited):
It was an Überchicken exercising his will to power.
Richard Nixon:
The chicken did not cross the road. I repeat, the chicken did not cross the road.
Nostradamus:
Another chicken named "Plucky" will be crossing a road on February 2, 2047; heed this warning.
Ted Nugent:
To prove to the opossum that it can be done.
Barack Obama:
Let me be perfectly clear, if the chickens like their eggs they can keep their eggs. No chicken will be required to cross the road to surrender her eggs. Period.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez:
Chickens should not be forced to lay eggs! This is because of corporate greed! Eggs should be able to lay themselves.
George Orwell:
Because the government had fooled him into thinking that he was crossing the road of his own free will, when he was really only serving their interests.
Ozzy Osbourne:
Because I was trying to bite off its head.
Camille Paglia:
It was drawn by the subconscious chthonian power of the feminine which men can never understand, to cross the road and focus itself on its task. Hens are not capable of doing this-their minds do not work that way. Feminism tries vainly to pretend there is no real difference between them, falsely following Rousseau. But de Sade has proved....
Thomas Paine:
Out of common sense.
Michael Palin:
Nobody expects the banished inky chicken!
Sarah Palin:
The chicken crossed the road because, gosh-darn it, he's a maverick!
Wolfgang Pauli:
There already was a chicken on the other side of the road.
Dr. Phil:
The problem we have here is that this chicken won't realize that he must first deal with the problem on this side of the road before it goes after the problem on the other side of the road. What we need to do is help him realize how stupid he is acting by not taking on his current problems before adding any new problems.
Plato:
For the greater good.
The Pope:
That is only for God to know.
Pyrrho the Skeptic:
What road?
J. Danforth Quayle:
Ite sawe ae potatoee.
Ayn Rand:
It was crossing the road because of its own rational choice to do so. There cannot be a collective unconscious; desires are unique to each individual.
Ronald Reagan:
Well, I forget.
Erich Maria Remarque:
The chicken crossed the road because, after his experience with war, he no longer felt at home in his home.
Georg Friedrich Riemann:
The answer appears in Dirichlet's lectures.
Carl Rodgers:
Why do you think the chicken crossed the road?
Alex Rodriguez:
It had a ten-year, $252 million contract to cross the road 162 times a year.
Fred Rogers:
Because he wanted to be my neighbor. Can you say "neighbor"? I knew you could.
Pete Rose:
I may have made mistakes in my life, but I did not, repeat not, place a bet on any chickens crossing roads on which my team was traveling.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau:
It was the "general will" of the people for the chicken to cross the road.
Bernie Sanders:
I made the grain FREE so that every chicken could eat until they were full! (The chicken was never seen again)
Col. Harland Sanders:
I missed one?
Jean-Paul Sartre:
In order to act in good faith and be true to itself, the chicken found it necessary to cross the road.
Lt. Montgomery Scott:
'Cos ma wee transporter beam was na functioning properly. Ah canna work miracles, Captain!
Jerry Seinfeld:
Why does anyone cross a road? I mean, why doesn't anyone ever think to ask, "What the heck was this chicken doing walking around all over the place anyway?"
Dr. Seuss:
Did the chicken cross the road?
Did he cross it with a toad?
Yes, the chicken crossed the road,
But why he crossed, I've not been told!
William Shakespeare:
I don't know why, but methinks I could rattle off a hundred-line soliloquy without much ado.
Ariel Sharon:
It was a suicide bomber chicken, trying to blow up a Jewish settlement. Let's wipe out a hundred chickens as retaliation.
Rev. Al Sharpton:
Why are all the chickens white?
Homer Simpson:
Mmmmm ... chicken!
O.J. Simpson:
To help me look for the real killer.
Sisyphus:
Was it pushing a rock, too?
B.F. Skinner:
Because the external influences, which had pervaded its sensorium from birth, had caused it to develop in such a fashion that it would tend to cross roads, even while believing these actions to be of its own free will.
Socrates:
To pick up some hemlock at the corner druggist.
The Sphinx:
You tell me.
Spock:
It was the only logical thing to do.
Joseph Stalin:
I don't care. Catch it. I need its eggs to make my omelet.
Martha Stewart:
No one called me to warn me which way the chicken was going. I had a standing order at the Farmer's Market to sell my eggs when the price dropped to a certain level. No little bird gave me any insider information.
Oliver Stone:
The question is not "Why did the chicken cross the road?" but is rather "Who was crossing the road at the same time whom we overlooked in our haste to observe the chicken crossing?"
John Sununu:
The Air Force was only too happy to provide the transportation, so quite understandably the chicken availed himself of the opportunity.
Mr. T:
If you saw me coming you'd cross the road too!
Margaret Thatcher:
There was no alternative.
Dylan Thomas:
To not go (sic) gentle into that good night.
Henry David Thoreau:
To live deliberately ... and suck all the marrow out of life.
Thomas de Torquemada:
Give me ten minutes with the chicken and I'll find out.
Donald Trump:
I've been told by my many sources, good sources - they're very good sources - that the chicken crossed the road. All the Fake News wants to do is write nasty things about the road, but it's a really good road. It's a beautiful road. Everyone knows how beautiful it is.
Mark Twain:
The news of its crossing has been greatly exaggerated.
Barbara Walters:
Isn't that interesting? In a few moments, we will be listening to the chicken tell, for the first time, the heartwarming story of how it experienced a serious case of molting, and went on to accomplish its lifelong dream of crossing the road.
George Washington:
Actually it crossed the Delaware with me back in 1776. But most history books don't reveal that I bunked with a birdie during the duration.
Mae West:
I invited it to come up and see me sometime.
Walt Whitman:
To cluck the song of itself.
Oprah Winfrey:
Well, I understand that the chicken is having problems, which is why he wants to cross the road so badly. So instead of having the chicken learn from his mistakes and take falls, which is a part of life, I'm going to give this chicken a new car so that he can just drive across the road and not live his life like the rest of the chickens.
William Wordsworth:
To have something to recollect in tranquility.
Molly Yard:
It was a hen!
Henny Youngman:
Take this chicken ... please.
Zeno of Elea:
To prove it could never reach the other side.
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