Why did the chicken cross the road?

Question

I really really want to know...really think about this as well. There is hidden Philosophy involved here.

Answer 1

WHY DID THE CHICKEN CROSS THE ROAD?

It depends on who you ask.......
Based on an Email From Mike & Tokeli

GeorgeBush'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.

Bill Gates' Answer: I have just released chicken 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 chicken.

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. Sues' 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 heartwarming 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 polluted by 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.

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, hardworking 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.

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?

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?

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

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

Answer 2

To prove to the armadillos and possums it can be done.

Seriously, I'd consider if the chicken deliberately crosses a road, or did the road pass under the chicken's path? People assign value to the 'road' element of the question, but I seriously doubt the chicken looks at it like that. To a chicken, it's all good-- the grass, gravel, blacktop and asphalt. It's only the observers who wonder about the chicken's motivation. In his own chicken-sized brain, he's just walking, not 'crossing a road'.

The straightforward answer to the riddle, "To get to the other side", is a bit like the koan riddles such as "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" or "Does a dog have Buddha nature?". There's no great cosmic truth to be revealed by the act of a chicken crossing a road. We could philosophize all day about determinism or fatalism, but all that discussion means exactly squat to a chicken crossing a road. The act is what it is.

Answer 3

Allow me to answer in story format:

Once upon a time there was a chicken.
She was minding her own business, walking around, looking for scraps.
Suddenly someone saw her and she had by chance crossed a road.
The person who happened upon this was a deeply philosophical type.
They asked the question, "why did that chicken cross the road?" to everyone they knew, even some they didn't know.
And so it went that the story of the chicken crossing the road became infamous.

Many have asked.
Many have answered.
Many still feel that it's all about the chicken.

Personally, I know that the chicken crossed the road because life happens. It isn't about getting to the other side, or even about the chicken or why or what's going on around it. It's about acceptance. Chicken, road, et cetera and so fourth.

Thanks for indulging me.
Mean it.

Answer 4

It wanted to get to the other side quickly because the neighborhood fox had just got into the coop and killed off all its siblings. And how did the fox get in? Well the farmer’s son had left the gate open when he ran off to school. So what happened to the farmer-because of his son's carelessness he was left without a breakfast because he did not have any chickens, and the one that got away and crossed the road wasn't coming back.

And was the boy really responsible? Maybe yes, maybe no. Because you see the farmer's wife was busy last night as her husband had thrown a party and invited all the other farmers with their families over, except that he forgot to invite his son’s school staff. When the boy realized the gaffe after all the guests had left, he asked his mother to help him with the homework, but she promised to get up an hour early and help him since she was tired.

As per her promise she did get up and did teach her son, but suddenly realized that she had not collected the eggs, and since she had a lot of housework to complete, she requested her son to collect the eggs. The young boy had collected a few dozen eggs and could just hold onto the basket, so he decided to come back after leaving the eggs on the table, but as he stepped onto the porch to enter the house, he tripped and fell and crashhhhhh... all the eggs fell onto the floor.

Just then his school bus tooted around the corner, so the boy ran in to pick up his bag trampling and breaking all the unbroken eggs in the process, while yelling to his mother to shut the chicken coop, he ran to his bus and rushed off to school.

And now to our chicken- how was it the only that escaped? Well, it had just walked out of the coop and was about turning a corner, when the fox rushed at it. Squawking it just managed to miss a swipe of the foxes claws by taking flight. The fox, when it espied the open door, rushed in and made short work of the chickens in the coop, and our friend the chicken, quaking in its small talons ran across the road.

So who was really at fault? Was it the boy, or was it the farmers wife for not hearing him (how could she, the poor thing was in the toilet and had just flushed it, so she did not hear her son), or was it the farmer for having a party and forgetting to invite the school staff?

Lets see why he didn't invite the school staff, well why did he have the party in the first place?

Cause he'd built the new cop you see! And why did he forget to invite the school staff? well he had, he had told his field hand to pass on the invitation on his behalf, but the nitwit fell sick on that day and hence the poor farmers wife had to work alone.

Ah! the pride the farmer had when his friends exclaimed at the beautiful chicken coop, and even saw the chicken that crossed the road the next day.

(Want me to add another angle, or twist as you may, or are you already bored? I could go on and on -more than the 500 words above. I could maybe come back to full circle. So tell me)

So class, what was the lesson learned?
The chicken crossed the road because the boy left the coop open!

Nah, maybe - In life you win some you lose some? (The chicken that crossed the road, or the ones killed)

or Don't entrust a grown ups chores to a small kid, or

or.....whatever inner meaning you could devolve out of my meandering story? well I am an Occidental, but no Chinese or Japanese sage to find hidden and deeper meanings in the story of the chicken crossing the road, so figure it out for yourself!

.........zzzzzzzzzzzzzz............ zzzzzzzzzz.......huh where was I/ Ah which came first the egg or the chicken........or something like that ...........zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz/////////////////////////////////// (that's me snoring)

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Answer 5

I'm not sure, but here are some really intelligent people's responses:

WHY DID THE CHICKEN CROSS THE ROAD?


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, 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 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.

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.

Mr. T: If you saw me coming you'd cross the road too!

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.

Molly Yard: It was a hen!

Zeno of Elea: To prove it could never reach the other side.

Chaucer: So priketh hem nature in hir corages.

Wordsworth: To wander lonely as a cloud.

The Godfather: I didn't want its mother to see it like that.

Keats: Philosophy will clip a chicken's wings.

Blake: To see heaven in a wild fowl.

Othello: Jealousy.

Dr Johnson: Sir, had you known the Chicken for as long as I have,
you would not so readily enquire, but feel rather the
Need to resist such a public Display of your own
lamentable and incorrigible Ignorance.

Mrs Thatcher: This chicken's not for turning.

Supreme Soviet: There has never been a chicken in this photograph.

Oscar Wilde: Why, indeed? One's social engagements whilst in
town ought never expose one to such barbarous
inconvenience - although, perhaps, if one must cross a
road, one may do far worse than to cross it as the
chicken in question.

Kafka: Hardly the most urgent enquiry to make of a low-grade
insurance clerk who woke up that morning as a hen.

Swift: It is, of course, inevitable that such a loathsome,
filth-ridden and degraded creature as Man should assume
to question the actions of one in all respects his
superior.

Macbeth: To have turned back were as tedious as to go o'er.

Whitehead: Clearly, having fallen victim to the fallacy of
misplaced concreteness.

Freud: An die andere Seite zu kommen. (Much laughter)

Hamlet: That is not the question.

Donne: It crosseth for thee.

Pope: It was mimicking my Lord Hervey.

Constable: To get a better view.

Answer 6

why do chickens do anything? obviously this chicken is scared of something. that's how we get the term that a person that is easily scared is a chicken. so the chicken crossed the road for defense. while the the road is dangerous, it's not as dangerous as the immediate threat there, so the chicken seeks to put some type of barrier between it and it's immediate threat....most likely a farmer. either that or the chicken got it's head cut off and ran across the road while running for the ten or so seconds before death.

Answer 7

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 black bile and a deficiency of choleric humour.
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.
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.
David Hume : Out of custom and habit.
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 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.
Jack Nicholson : 'Cause it (censored) wanted to. That's the (censored) reason.
Pyrrho the Skeptic : What road?
The Sphinx : You tell me.
Henry David Thoreau : To live deliberately ... and suck all the marrow out of life.
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.
Ronald Reagan : I forget.
Mark Twain : The news of its crossing has been greatly exaggerated.
Zeno of Elea : To prove it could never reach the other side


in my personal view, because its instincts told it to. I dont think chickens have the will to choose, it crossed the road cause it was compelled to by forces unknown.

Answer 8

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, 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 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.

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.

Mr. T: If you saw me coming you'd cross the road too!

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.

Molly Yard: It was a hen!

Zeno of Elea: To prove it could never reach the other side.

Chaucer: So priketh hem nature in hir corages.

Wordsworth: To wander lonely as a cloud.

The Godfather: I didn't want its mother to see it like that.

Keats: Philosophy will clip a chicken's wings.

Blake: To see heaven in a wild fowl.

Othello: Jealousy.

Dr Johnson: Sir, had you known the Chicken for as long as I have,
you would not so readily enquire, but feel rather the
Need to resist such a public Display of your own
lamentable and incorrigible Ignorance.

Mrs Thatcher: This chicken's not for turning.

Supreme Soviet: There has never been a chicken in this photograph.

Oscar Wilde: Why, indeed? One's social engagements whilst in
town ought never expose one to such barbarous
inconvenience - although, perhaps, if one must cross a
road, one may do far worse than to cross it as the
chicken in question.

Kafka: Hardly the most urgent enquiry to make of a low-grade
insurance clerk who woke up that morning as a hen.

Swift: It is, of course, inevitable that such a loathsome,
filth-ridden and degraded creature as Man should assume
to question the actions of one in all respects his
superior.

Macbeth: To have turned back were as tedious as to go o'er.

Whitehead: Clearly, having fallen victim to the fallacy of
misplaced concreteness.

Freud: An die andere Seite zu kommen. (Much laughter)

Hamlet: That is not the question.

Donne: It crosseth for thee.

Pope: It was mimicking my Lord Hervey.

Constable: To get a better view.

Answer 9

This riddle was actually created by a philosopher there is no answer to this riddle it was never about the chicken it was about your own opinion on why someone would cross the road. As it turns out some one just assumed it was about the chicken and that's how the question is thought of today.

Answer 10

Plato-For the greater good

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