Why DID the Chicken
Cross the Road?

Dr. Seuss: “Did the chicken cross the road? Did she cross it with a toad? Yes! The chicken crossed the road, but why she crossed, I’ve not been told!”

Sojourner Truth: "And ar'n't I a chicken? Look at me! Look at my wing! [And here she bared her right wing to the shoulder, showing her tremendous muscular power] I have clucked, and pecked, and gathered into barns, and no rooster could head me! And ar'n't I a chicken? I could work as much and eat as much as a cock — when I could get it — and bear de bark of the dog as well! And ar'n't' I a chicken? I have borne thirteen eggs a day, and seen 'em mos' all sold off the grocer, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ar'n't I a chicken?"

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

Grandma: “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.”

Fox Mulder: “You saw it cross the road with your own eyes. How many more chickens have to cross before you believe it?”

Dana Scully: "I know the chicken crossed the road, but it just doesn't make sense — why would the chicken risk crossing the traffic?"

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

Margaret Sanger: “No hen can call herself free, or a road-crosser, who does not own and control her own feathers.”

Ernest Hemingway: “To die. In the rain.”

Mary Shelley: "To build a perfect chicken from the discarded entrails of convict chickens."

George W. Bush: “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.”

Emily Dickenson: “Because I could not cross the road / She kindly crossed for me. / That chicken laid an egg that was / Delicious with my tea.”

Ralph Nader: “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 the other side of the road because it was crushed by the wheels of a gas-guzzling SUV.”

Susan Sontag: “A chicken crossing the road is not relevant. What is relevant is the critique of the crossing.”

Ronald Reagan: “What chicken?”

Janet Reno: “I’m going to devote the rest of my career to assuring that chickens have the right to cross any road they want to in Florida.”

Einstein: “Did the chicken really cross the road, or did the road move beneath the chicken?”

Susan B. Anthony: "Resolved, That it is the duty of the hens of this coop to secure to themselves their sacred right to cross the road."

Karl Marx: “It was a historical inevitability.”

Martha Stewart: “A properly dressed chicken may cross the road, and that’s a Good Thing — but be sure to sell your chicken stock if you hear any rumors about oncoming traffic.”

The American Mensa Committee: “Because she was an egghead.”

Hannah More: "Hatched on Afric's Golden Coast,
Once I was as blest as you;
Parents tender I could boast,
Rooster dear, and chicks too.
Thou in Afric's distant land,
Still shalt see the cock I love;
Join him to the Chicken band,
Guide his Soul across the road."

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

Bill Clinton: “I did not cross the road with THAT chicken. . . . It depends on what the meaning of ‘chicken’ is.”

Hillary Clinton: “I’m proud to say that that chicken was a constituent of mine here in the great state of New York, and a Yankees fan.”

Aristotle: “It is the nature of chickens to cross the road.”

Louisa May Alcott: "Because Marmee thought the chickens across the road could use a little more feed in the cold winter, during the war."

Bill Gates: “I have just released e-Chicken 2000, 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 e-Chicken.”

Maya Angelou: “There is a true yearning to respond to / The crossing of the road. / So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew, / The African, the Native American, the Sioux, / The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek, / The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheik, / The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher, / The privileged, the homeless, the Chicken. / They hear. They all hear / The road longing to be crossed.”

The Bible: “And God said unto the chicken, ‘Thou shalt cross the road.’ And the chicken crossed the road, and there was much rejoicing.”

Colonel Sanders: “I missed one?”

Condoleezza Rice: “That chicken will cross the road only when this government decides that régime change is in its long-term strategic interest.”

Mary Wollstonecraft: “Poultry, including every description, wish to be loved and respected by something; and the common herd will always take the nearest road to the completion of their wishes.”

Rush Limbaugh: “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.”

Virginia Woolf: “I would venture to guess that the anonymous Fowl who crossed the road was a hen and not a rooster.”

Jane Austen: “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single chicken, being possessed of a good fortune and presented with a good road, must be desirous of crossing.”

Buddha: “Therefore, on the road there is no chicken, no road, nor perception of the road, nor impulse to cross it, nor consciousness of the road, no feathers, no beak, no clawed feet, no chicken. No road no chicken no crossing . . . only the great prajnaparamita of the empty form of chicken and the empty form of the road, and that emptiness; gone, gone, gone beyond, gone altogether beyond. ‘But, O Buddha,’ said Sariputta, ‘what is that crossing the road before us at this moment?’ And the Great One replied, ‘A chicken, Sariputta.’ ‘But why, O Great One, does it cross the road?’ ‘To get to the other side, Sariputta.’ Om.”

T.S. Eliot: “Because chickens will not cease from crossing, and the end of all their crossings will be to reach the side of the road they started from, and to know it for the first time.”

H.P. Lovecraft: “To escape the crawling horror lurking on this side of the road, a nameless and foetid monstrosity that cannot be conceived save in the dreams of madness.”

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.’”

Barbara Walters: “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.”

John Lennon: “Imagine all the chickens / crossing roads in peace. / You may say I'm a dreamer. . . .”

Marcel Marceau: “   ”