(Courtesy from Gustave Rabson)
Plato
For the greater good.
Karl Marx
It was a historical inevitability.
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.
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.
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).
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.
Douglas Adams
Forty-two.
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 sapiens pedestrians is truly a remarkable occurrence.
Salvador Dali
The Fish.
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.
Goethe
The eternal hen-principle made it do it.
Ernest Hemingway
To die. In the rain.
Werner Heisenberg
We are not sure which side of the road the chicken was on, butit 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?
Ronald Reagan
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.
Mark Twain
The news of its crossing has been greatly exaggerated.
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 made the chicken the most consumed 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.
Malcom X
It was coming home to roost.
Special contributions by Andreas Heertsch
Sigmund Freund
To maximize the libido.
Georg Friedrich Hegel
Thesis: to be on this side. Antithesis: to be on the other side. Synthesis: cross the road.
Gottlieb Fichte
It's the only action a chicken can do to become aware of itself.
Rudolf Steiner
It was crossing the threshold.
Richard von Weizsäcker
As a middleuropean chicken it fulfills its challenge: connect east and west.
Michail Gorbatchov
Glasnost: Everyone can see, the chicken does not follow the mainstream (as usual traffic does) but crosses(!) the road.
Boris Yeltsin
Unfortunately he is too drunken, so he dreaming of roasted chicken.
The chicken itself
It's not very kind to make jokes about a walk, which may possibly put an end to my life!
Special contributions by Frank T.Smith
Machinea (Argentine Finance Minister)
Because the malditos Brazilians lured him across.Mallan (Brazilian Finance Minister)
Because corn is too expensive in Argentina.
Fidel Castro
Because the US cartels are intent upon destroying the Cuban revolution.
Bishop Berkley
The question is irrelevant. It crossed the road to the other side and is no longer visible, therefore doesn't exist.
Sorel Kierkegaard
It was faced with an either/or decision: to stay on this side and despair, eventually commit suicide; or cross over to where there is hope, as any thinking chicken would do.
Immanuel Kant
We cannot know whether the chicken "an sich" crossed the road or or not. It only *appears* to be so.
Donald MacDonald
To jump into the frying pan and become a Big Chicken Mac.
My own contributions - VWS
Bill Clinton (by VWS)
Uhhh... Let me finish this business with Monica and then I may think on an answer.
Richard Dawkins
Because its egothistical genes were impelling it to do some altruistic action on the other side.
Fernando Henrique Cardoso
Because it was going to be privatized
Paulo Maluf
It was my gift to a neighbor who promised to vote for me.
Pitta
It was working for my political enemies.
Nicea Camargo (ex-Pitta)
Do you need any other proof of my former husband's curruption?