Albert Einstein: Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road crossed the chicken depends upon your frame of reference.
Aristotle: It is in the nature of chickens to cross roads.
Aristotle: To actualise its potential.
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.
Blake: To see heaven in a wild fowl.
Buddha: If you ask this question, you deny your own chicken-nature.
Buddha: If you meet the chicken on the road, kill it.
Carl Jung: The confluence of events in the cultural gestalt necessitated that individual chickens cross roads at this historical juncture, and therefore synchronistically brought such occurrences into being.
Charles Darwin: For centuries chickens have been naturally selected in such a way that they are now genetically predisposed to cross the road.
Charles Darwin: It was the logical next step after coming down from the trees.
Chaucer: So priketh hem nature in hir corages.
Constable: To get a better view.
David Hume: Out of custom and habit.
John Donne: It crosseth for thee.
Douglas Adams: Forty-two.
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.
Emily Dickinson: Because it could not stop for death.
Epicurus: For fun.
Ernest Hemingway: To die. In the rain.
Freud: The fact that you are concerned at all about chickens crossing the road reveals your sexual insecurity.
Freud: An die andere Seite zu kommen. (To get to the other side. Much laughter)
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: The eternal hen-principle made it do it.
Hamlet: That is not the question.
Henry David Thoreau: To live deliberately… and suck all the marrow out of life.
Hippocrates: Because of an excess of light pink gooey stuff in its pancreas.
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.
Isaac Newton: Every chicken in the universe will always be able to cross the road perpendicular to the length of the road in an infinitely long straight line at constant speed, unless the chicken is stopped by unbalanced opposing forces from the direction opposite to the chicken’s motion.
Jack Nicholson: ‘Cause it [censored] wanted to. That’s the [censored] reason.
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!
Jean-Paul Sartre: In order to act in good faith and be true to itself, the chicken found it necessary to cross the road.
John Sununu: The Air Force was only too happy to provide the transportation, so quite understandably the chicken availed himself of the opportunity.
Kafka: Hardly the most urgent enquiry to make of a low-grade insurance clerk who woke up that morning as a hen.
Karl Marx: It was a historical inevitability.
Keats: Philosophy will clip a chicken’s wings.
Kindergarten teacher: To get to the other side of the road.
Ludwig Wittgenstein: The possibility of “crossing” was encoded into the objects “chicken” and “road”, and circumstances came into being which caused the actualisation of this potential occurrence.
Macbeth: To have turned back were as tedious as to go o’er.
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.
Mark Twain: The news of its crossing has been greatly exaggerated.
Molly Yard: It was a hen!
Moses: And the Lord came down from heaven and said unto the chickens: “The road shall be crossed.” And the chickens began to cross the road, and there was rejoicing.
Mr. T: If you saw me coming you’d cross the road too!
Mrs. Thatcher: This chicken’s not for turning.
Nietzsche: Because if you gaze too long across the Road, the Road gazes also across you.
Oliver North: National Security was at stake.
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.
Othello: Jealousy.
Plato: For the greater good.
Alexander Pope: It was mimicking my Lord Hervey.
Pyrrho the Skeptic: What road?
Ralph Waldo Emerson: It didn’t cross the road; it transcended it.
Richard Nixon: The chickens did not cross the road. I repeat! The chickens did NOT cross the road.
Ronald Reagan: I forget.
Saddam Hussein: The aforementioned action is an unprovoked act of rebellion, and we shall quite justly pour five tons of nerve gas upon it.
Salvador Dali: The Fish.
Simeon II: The chicken will cross the road! Believe me!
Snoopy: It was a dark and stormy night. Somewhere in the rain, a chicken was crossing the road.
Supreme Soviet: There has never been a chicken in this photograph.
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.
The Godfather: I didn’t want its mother to see it like that.
The Sphinx: You tell me.
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.
Werner Heisenberg: No one ever knows for certain whether it will actually reach the other side of the road.
Werner Heisenberg: We are not sure which side of the road the chicken was on, but it was moving very fast.
Whitehead: Clearly, having fallen victim to the fallacy of misplaced concreteness.
Wordsworth: To wander lonely as a cloud.
Zeno of Elea: To prove it could never reach the other side.
Vute: Think I missed something.
Author: Various / anonymous (internet folklore)
A compilation of joke answers; some appear in Philosophy Now and other lists.