Why did the chicken cross the road???

Plato

    For the greater good.

Aristotle

    To fulfill its nature on the other side.

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, DAMMIT, DEAD!

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 sapien pedestrians is truly a remarkable occurence.

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.

Johann Wolfgang von 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, 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?

Ronald Reagan

    Well,……………….

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.

Mishima

    For the beauty of it. The chicken’s extension of its sinuous legs sent shivers of a dark despair into the souls not only of the silently watching hens but also the roosters, who felt a sudden sexual desire for their exquisite comrade. The dark courage of the chicken was as beautiful as drops of dew upon jade at midnight, struck by a partial moon, its light filtered through clouds. One of the deeply aroused roosters could stand the intensity of the moment no more and bit off the head of the beautiful, courageous chicken-hero, whose wine blood was deliciously drunken by the road, and he died.

Johnny Cochran

    The chicken didn’t cross the road. Some chicken-hating, genocidal, lying public official moved the road right under the chicken’s feet while he was practicing his golf swing and thinking about his family.

Camus

    The chicken’s mother had just died. But this did not really upset him, as any number of witnesses can attest. In fact, he crossed just because the sun got in his eyes.

John Sununu (again)

    I would argue that the chicken never crossed the road at all. That it is a story concocted by the Clinton Administration to distract attention from their failed agriculture policy. Where is the evidence that the chicken crossed the road? Where, Michael?

Michael Kinsley

    Oh, John, come on! Everybody knows the chicken crossed the road. What evidence do you need? It’s obvious that the chicken crossed the road. Your whole argument is just a smoke and mirror tactic to distract us from the fact that most chickens polled now back the Democratic Party. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, John.

Siskel

    I don’t know why it crossed the road, but I loved it. Thumbs up!

Ebert

    I disagree. The whole thing left the audience wondering; the chicken’s crossing the road was never clearly explained and the chicken didn’t emote very well. It couldn’t even speak English! Thumbs down.

Michael Kinsley

    But you both agree it did cross the road, right? See, John. I’m right as usual.