Basic answers to the basic question "Why did the chicken cross the road?"

Jessica Simpson 's Answer: Why would he be one a road, I thought chickens lived in the ocean?

Homer Simpson 's Answer: There was free beer on the other side of the road.

Bill Cosby 's Answer: Weeelll, ya see, the chicken crossed the road, and to get... to...the jello pudding pops.

Snoop Dogg 's Answer: This (censored) fool of a chicken didn't (censored) know what the (censored) he was doin crossin a (censored) alley in (censored) Harlem at 1:00 in the (censored) mornin'.

Linda Tripp 's Answer: "I've been friends with this chicken for a long time. I only recorded the chicken's crossing of the road because it was important for the country to know what was going on Pennsylvania Ave."

Isaac Newton 's Answer: The duck suggested to the chicken that they play follow the leader then the duck crossed the road causing the chicken to cross after it, but at the same time holding up traffic, thus proving that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction .

Shakespeare 's Answer: To cross or not to cross, that is the question.

Rene Descartes 's Answer: Since the chicken does not really exist it was only an illusion that the chicken crossed the road. This illusion was only in my mind. Therefore I created the chicken that crossed the road.

Pete Rose 's Answer: I don't know, but I swear I didn't bet on it.

Gandhi 's Answer: All chickens should peacefully resist by crossing the road.

Steve Jobs 's (Apple) Answer: Because of the brand-new iChicken- a portable device that crosses roads, lays eggs, gives wakeup calls and provides dinner, automatically. This amazing device can simply plug in to the $4000 iCoop to produce additional iChickens and recharge existing iChickens, or plug it into the $9000 iChop to convert iChicken files into iFood. iFood-to-Regular Food converters sell for an additional $50/month fee, however the optional iFood-to-FoodXP converter is still in development. iChickens are only available from authorized iDealers, which can be found in nearly every US state. If your iChicken develops a disease or stops working, you must send it by FedEx Overnight to Littleton, Montana and our iTechnicians will send you a replacement within 3 months. The iChicken. Wow.

Colin Powell 's Answer: This is not about whether inspectors made sure the chicken crossed the road, it's about the willingness of the chicken to cross the road voluntarily.

Darwin's Answer: It was the logical next step after coming down from the trees.

Another Answer: Chickens, over great periods of time, have been naturally selected in such a way that they are now genetically disposed to cross roads.

(former) Iraq Information Minister: There is no such chicken trying to cross the road, and there never has been any such chicken.

Moses's Answer: 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.

David Hume's Answer: Out of custom and habit.

Douglas Adams's Answer: Forty-two.

Epicurus's Answer: For fun.

Henry David Thoreau's Answer: To live deliberately ... and suck all the marrow out of life.

Hippocrates's Answer: Because of an excess of light pink gooey stuff in its pancreas.

Howard Cosell's Answer: 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 homosapien pedestrians is truly a remarkable occurrence.

Jack Nicholson's Answer: 'Cause it (censored) wanted to. That's the (censored) reason.

John Sununu 's Answer: The Air Force was only too happy to provide the transportation, so quite understandably the chicken availed himself of the opportunity.

Johann Friedrich von Goethe's Answer: The eternal hen-principle made it do it.

Johnny Cochran 's Answer: Because the road was black and the chicken was white. We must acquit.

Machiavelli's Answer: The point is that the chicken crossed the road. Who cares why? The end of crossing the road justifies whatever motive there was.

Another Answer: So that its subjects will view it with admiration, as a chicken which has the daring and courage to boldly cross the road, but also with fear, for whom among them has the strength to contend with such a paragon of avian virtue? In such a manner is the princely chicken's dominion maintained

Mark Twain's Answer: The news of its crossing has been greatly exaggerated.

Ralph Waldo Emerson's Answer: It didn't cross the road; it transcended it.

Salvador Dali 's Answer: The Fish.

Secretary Cheney's Answer: 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.

Senator Lieberman's Answer: 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.

The Sphinx's Answer: You tell me.

Neil Armstrong's Answer: To go where no chicken has gone before.

Another Answer: That's one small step for Chicken, one giant leap for Chicken kind.

Thomas de Torquemada's Answer: Give me ten minutes with the chicken and I'll find out.

Timothy Leary's Answer: Because that's the only kind of trip the Establishment would let it take.

George Bush's Answer: 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 it is against us. There is no middle ground here.

Al Gore's Answer: I invented the chicken. I invented the road. Therefore, the chicken crossing the road represented the application of these two different functions of government in a new, reinvented way designed to bring greater services to the American people.

Another Answer: 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

Bill Gates' Answer: I have just released eChicken 2003, which will not only cross roads, but will lay eggs, file your important documents, and balance your checkbook - and Internet Explorer is an inextricable part of eChicken.

Martha Stewart's Answer: No one called to warn me which way that 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.

Dr. Seuss' Answer: Did the chicken cross the road? Did he cross it with a toad? Yes, the chicken crossed the road, But why it crossed, I've not been told!

Ernest Hemingway's Answer: To die. In the rain. Alone.

Martin Luther King Jr's Answer: I envision a world where all chickens will be free to cross roads without having their motives called into question.

Grandpa's Answer: In my day, we didn't ask why the chicken crossed the road. Someone told us that the chicken crossed the road, and that was good enough for us.

Barbara Walters' Answer: Isn't that interesting? In a few moments we will be listening to the chicken tell, for the first time, the heart-warming story of how it experienced a serious case of molting and went on to accomplish its life-long dream of crossing the road.

Ralph Nader's Answer: The chicken's habitat on the original side of the road had been pollutedby unchecked industrialist greed. The chicken did not reach the unspoiled habitat on other side of the road because it was crushed by the wheels of a gas-guzzling SUV.

Another Answer: 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.

Jerry Seinfield's Answer: 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?"

Pat Buchanan's Answer: To steal a job from a decent, hard-working American.

Rush Limbaugh's Answer: I don't know why the chicken crossed the road, but I'll bet it was getting a government grant to cross the road, and I'll bet someone out there is already forming a support group to help chickens with crossing-the-road syndrome. Can you believe this? How much more of this can real Americans take? Chickens crossing the road paid for by their tax dollars, and when I say tax dollars, I'm talking about your money, money the government took from you to build roads for chickens to cross.

Jerry Falwell's Answer: 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.".

John Lennon's Answer: Imagine all the chickens crossing roads in peace.

Aristotle's Answer: It is the nature of chickens to cross the road.

Another Answer: To actualize it's potential.

Karl Marx's Answer: It was a historical inevitability.

Saddam Hussein's Answer: This was an unprovoked act of rebellion and we were quite justified in dropping 50 tons of nerve gas on it.

Voltaire's Answer: I may not agree with what the chicken did, but I will defend to the death its right to do it.

Captain Kirk's Answer: To boldly go where no chicken has gone before.

Fox Mulder's Answer: You saw it cross the road with your own eyes! How many more chickens have to cross before you believe it?

Scully's Answer: It was a simple bio-mechanical reflex that is commonly found in chickens.

Bill Clinton's Answer: I did not cross the road with THAT chicken. What do you mean by chicken? Could you define chicken, please?

Another Answer: I did not cross the road with THAT chicken. However, I did ask Vernon Jordan to find the chicken a job in New York.

The Bible's Answer: 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.

Albert Einstein's Answer: Did the chicken really cross the road or did the road move beneath the chicken?

Another Answer: Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road crossed the chicken depends upon your frame of reference.

Sigmund Freud's Answer: The fact that you are at all concerned that the chicken crossed the road reveals your underlying sexual insecurity.

L.A.P.D.'s Answer: Give me ten minutes with the chicken and I'll find out.

Richard Nixon's Answer: The chicken did not cross the road. I repeat, the chicken did not cross the road.

Another Answer: I don't know any chickens. I have never known any chickens.

Buddha's Answer: If you ask this question, you deny your own chicken nature.

Joseph Stalin's Answer: I don't care. Catch it. I need its eggs to make my omelette.

Carl Jung's Answer: 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.

Louis Farrakhan's Answer: The road, you will see, represents the black man. The chicken crossed the "black man" in order to trample him and keep him down.

John Locke's Answer: Because he was exercising his natural right to liberty.

Albert Camus' Answer: It doesn't matter; the chicken's actions have no meaning except to him.

Oliver Stone's Answer: 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?"

Another Answer: National Security was at stake

The Pope's Answer: That is only for God to know.

Immanuel Kant's Answer: chicken, being an autonomous being, chose to cross the road of his own free will.

Another Answer: The chicken was acting out of a sense of duty to cross the road, as chickens have traditionally crossed roads throughout history

MC. Escher's Answer: That depends on which plane of reality the chicken was on at the time.

George Orwell's Answer: 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.

Plato's Answer: For the greater good.

Nietzsche's Answer: Because if you gaze too long across the Road, the Road gazes also across you.

B.F. Skinner's Answer: 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 freewill.

Jean-Paul Sartre's Answer: In order to act in good faith and be true to itself, the chicken found it necessary to cross the road.

Emily Dickenson's Answer: Because it could not stop for death.

O.J. Simpson's Answer: It didn't. I was playing golf with it at the time.

Ken Starr's Answer: I intend to prove that the chicken crossed the road at the behest of the president of the United States of America, in an effort to distract law enforcement officials and the American public from the criminal wrongdoing our highest elected official has been trying to cover up. As a result, the chicken is just another pawn in the president's ongoing and elaborate scheme to obstruct justice and undermine the rule of law. For that reason, my staff intends to offer the chicken unconditional immunity provided he cooperates fully with our investigation. Furthermore, the chicken will not be permitted to reach the other side of the road, until our investigation and any Congressional follow-up investigations, have been completed. (We also are investigating whether Sid Blumenthal has leaked information to the Rev. Jerry Falwell, alleging the chicken to be homosexual in an effort to discredit any useful testimony the bird may have to offer, or at least to ruffle his feathers.).

Colonel Sanders' Answer: I missed one?

CBS-TV's Andy Rooney: I could have said "Didja ever wonder why it is that the chicken crossed the road, and which road it was?" But I didn't. I did ask some turkeys, however, and this is what they said...

President William Jefferson Clinton: That depends on how yuh define "road".

COBOL Programmers:

0001-CHICKEN-CROSSING.
IF NO-MORE-VEHICLES THEN
PERFORM 0010-CROSS-THE-ROAD
VARYING STEPS FROM 1 BY 1 UNTIL
ON-THE-OTHER-SIDE
ELSE
GO TO 0001-CHICKEN-CROSSING

Hillary Rodham Clinton: I don't bake cookies; I don't cook chicken. I am not a crook -- er, I am not a cook.

James Carville: Because the mean-spirited Republican majority in congress was going to cook the chicken and leave only the sun-bleached bones picked bare for the American people that they'd throw out in the street, Larry!

Ayn Rand: A chicken's first duty is to itself. And only by living for itself is it able to achieve the things which are the glory of chickenkind. Such is the nature of achievement.

A Typical Politically Correct Person: Don't blame the chicken! Society is to blame. The chicken did cross the road, but he or she was merely a victim of this racist, bigoted, sexist society. We are all to blame, for failing to provide... [blah, blah, blah -- ad nauseam]

The Channel 7 (WSVN, Miami) News Team: In a story you will see only on WSVN, a young homeless chicken crosses the road in Citron Beach for the very first time... The orphaned chicken is hit by a speeding car and is thrown sky high... Authorities are still trying to pick up the pieces. At the family's request, the chicken's remains will be used to make chicken soup for the orphaned chicks...
This just in... Is OJ's golf game getting worse, now that he's in the custody battle of his life?

Tom Leykis: I cannot bee-LEEVE that women are SO shocked to hear that the reason the chicken crossed the road is because the rooster was trying to get into her pants!

Rush Limbaugh: It was having more fun than a chicken should be allowed to have, listening to the Rush Limbaugh program on the EIB network and reveling in its righteousness!

Gilligan and the Skipper: 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.

Deanna Troi: It was experiencing -- GREAT PAIN -- TORMENT!

George Bush: Read my chicken lips. To face a kinder, gentler thousand points of headlights.

Kurt Vonnegut: And so it goes -- to the other side.

H. Ross Perot: No, no, it's not about me, Larry. It's about the chicken.

Robert Frost: To cross the road less traveled by.

Jean Chretien: OK, for me, de chicken, 'e crossed de road because 'is team was der, and because 'e 'ad de plan.

Bob Dole: Bob Dole says "To get to the other side."

Sigmund Freud: The chicken obviously was female and obviously interpreted the pole on which the cross walk sign was mounted as a phallic symbol of which she was envious, selbstverstaendlich.

Bill Gates: We own the road. We own the chicken. It's none of your damn business.

Western New York Retailers: To see the hens in Hens & Kelly's window.

Omar Khayam: The moving chicken fingers write, and having writ, move on.

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.

Sir Isaac Newton: Chickens at rest tend to stay at rest. Chickens in motion tend to cross the road.

Plato: For the greater good.

Pierre de Fermat: I just don't have room here to give the full explanation...

Karl Marx: It was a historical inevitability.

Chico Marx: Why a duck? Why-a-no chicken?

Groucho Marx: You try to cross over there a chicken, and you'll find out why-a-no chicken. It's deep water, that's viaduct.

WWNN's Adam Clatsoff: If you had been hatched where the chicken was hatched, and had been raised where the chicken was raised, and eaten the same chicken feed that the chicken had eaten, you probably would have crossed the road, too.

WFTL's Dante DeAngelis: Now let me get this straight. You're saying a chicken crossed the road, and now YOU'RE asking ME, "WHY?"

Machiavelli: So that its subjects will view it with admiration, as a chicken which has the daring and courage to boldly cross the road, but also with fear, for whom among them has the strength to contend with such a paragon of avian virtue? In such a manner is the princely chicken's dominion maintained.

Hippocrates: Because of an excess of light pink gooey stuff in its pancreas.

Captain James T. Kirk: To boldly go where no chicken has gone before.

Mr. Spock: It seemed like the logical thing to do at the time.

Colonel Harlan Sanders: It wasn't one of our chickens. They don't have to, because now KFC delivers!

Jacques Derrida: Any number of contending discourses may be discovered within the act of the chicken crossing the road, and each interpretation is equally valid as the authorial intent can never be discerned, because structuralism is DEAD, DAMMIT, DEAD!

Noam Chomsky: The chicken didn't exactly cross the road. As of 1994, something like 99.8% of all US chickens reaching maturity that year, had spent 82% of their lives in confinement. The living conditions in most chicken coops break every international law ever written, and some, particularly the ones for chickens bound for slaughter, border on inhumane. My point is, they had no chance to cross the road (unless you count the ride to the supermarket). Even if one or two have crossed roads for whatever reason, most never get a chance. Of course, this is not what we are told. Instead, we see chickens happily dancing around on Sesame Street and Foster Farms commercials where chickens are not only crossing roads, but driving trucks (incidentally, Foster Farms is owned by the same people who own the Foster Freeze chain, a subsidiary of the dairy industry). Anyway, ... (Chomsky continues for 32 pages. For the full text of his answer, contact Odonian Press)

Al Bundy: It was married... With children!

Marcy Jefferson: Why do you keep calling me a chicken?

Kelly Bundy: How do you spell chicken?

Thomas de Torquemada: Give me ten minutes with the chicken and I'll find out.

Timothy Leary: Because that's the only kind of trip the Establishment would let it take.

Walter Cronkite: That's the way it is.

Nietzsche: Because if you gaze too long across the Road, the Road gazes also across you.

Oliver North: National Security was at stake.

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.

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.

Jean-Paul Sartre: In order to act in good faith and be true to itself, the chicken found it necessary to cross the road.

Ludwig Wittgenstein: The possibility of "crossing" was encoded into the objects "chicken" and "road," and circumstances came into being which caused the actualization of this potential occurrence.

Albert Einstein: Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road crossed the chicken depends upon your frame of reference.

Aristotle: To actualize its potential.

Buddha: If you ask this question, you deny your own chicken-nature.

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.

Salvador Dali: The Fish.

Monty Python: The Larch.

Douglas Adams: Forty-two.

Marcel Marceau:

: Darwin: It was the logical next step after coming down from the trees. Emily Dickinson: Because it could not stop for death. Epicurus: For fun. Ralph Waldo Emerson: It didn't cross the road; it transcended it. Johann Friedrich von Goethe: The eternal hen-principle made it do it. Ernest Hemingway: To die. In the rain. Craig Crossman, host of Computer America: To lay hundreds, even thousands, of eggs. Werner Heisenberg: We are not sure which side of the road the chicken was on, but it was moving very fast. 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. Jack Nicholson: 'Cause it (censored) wanted to. That's the (censored) reason. Pyrrho the Skeptic: What road? President Ronald Reagan: Ask Mommy. I forget. John Sununu: The Air Force was only too happy to provide the transportation, so quite understandably the chicken availed himself of the opportunity. The Sphinx: You tell me. Henry David Thoreau: To live deliberately ... and suck all the marrow out of life. Senator Edward Moore "Teddy" Kennedy I panicked. Katherine McKinnon: Because, in this patriarchial state, for the last four centuries, men have applied their principles of justice in determining how chickens should be cared for, their language has demeaned the identity of the chicken, their technonogy and trucks have decided how and where chickens will be distributed, their science has become the basis for what chickens eat, their sense of humor has provided the framework for this joke, their art and film have given us our perception of chicken life, their lust for flesh has has made the chicken the most consumned animal in the US, and their legal system has left the chicken with no other recourse. Stephen Jay Gould: It is possible that there is a sociobiological explanation for it, but we have been deluged in recent years with sociobiological stories despite the fact that we have little direct evidence about the genetics of behavior, and we do not know how to obtain it for the specific behaviors that figure most prominently in sociobiological speculation. Joseph Stalin: I don't care. Catch it. I need its eggs to make my omlette. Malcolm X: It was coming home to roost. Louis Farrakkan: It wasn't one chicken, you lying white devils! It was TEN MILLION chickens! Dr. Emmett Brown: Road? Where we're going we don't need roads! Mark Twain: The news of its crossing has been greatly exaggerated.