Chickenology Encyclopedia

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Why did the chicken cross the road?
Why do chickens cross roads?
The most comprehensive listing on the Web (or so it should be).

L

L.A. Police Department:

• Give me five minutes with the chicken and I'll find out.

Lancelot:

• To perform a dashing and heroic rescue!

Mark Lane:

• There is new, irrefutable evidence that the chicken did not act alone.

Lao-Tse:

• Those who cluck do not know. Those who know do not cluck.
• The chicken both crosses the road and not-crosses the road because that is the way of Tao.
• The chicken ignores the dictates of society and seeks only to conform with the underlying pattern of the universe, Through spontaneous compliance with the impulses of its own essential nature and by emptying itsself of all doctrines and knowledge, it achieves unity with the Tao and derives from it a mystical power that enables the chicken to transcend all mundane distinctions, even the distinction of life and death.
• To live in harmony with nature.

Gary Larson:

• Don't ask me. I am retired.

Levi Lauer:

• Levinas is the key contemporary thinker on this problem.

Stan Laurel:

• I'm sorry, Ollie. It escaped when I opened the run.

Edward Lear:

• There was a chicken from Rome
  Who had a most beautiful comb
  You must cross the road
  Is what he was told
  Otherwise, you will never get home.
• There was a chicken from Del Mar
  Who decided to travel quite far
  So she became quite bold
  And ran across the road
  And jumped on top of a passing car.

Timothy Leary:

• Because that's the only kind of trip the Establishment would let it take.

John Le Carre:

• Because it knew, at the core of its being where none could ever reach, that its only course of action now that its cover was blown wide open was to try and slip away into the grey, foggy, bleak evening before Smiley came, accompanied by his silent shadow Peter Guillam, asking questions for which there could never be answers.

Dr. Hannibal Lector:

• So I could eat its liver, with some fava beans and a nice chianti .......thththththththth.

Leda:

• Are you sure it wasn't Zeus dressed up as a chicken? He's into that kind of thing, you know.

Legeon of Decency:

• Teaching about chickens should be left exclusively to the home and the church. It is a mortal sin to ask this question anywhere else.

Foghorn Leghorn:

• To get to that damn Dawg, Boah!

Princess Leia:

• I don't know... but I have a bad feeling about this.
• Chicken? I thought I recognized your fowl scent I was brought aboard!
• The tighter your grasp, the more chickens will slip through your feathers!

Gottfried Von Leibnitz:

• In this best possible world, the road was made for it to cross.
• It is a necessity in this best of all possible worlds.

Yeshayahu Leibowitz:

• Stupid question. We simply follow the halacha. The chicken crosses the road. That's it.

Yosef Leibowitz:

• Why did it cross the road? Creation, revelation, redemption...

Lemitre:

• He crossed with a big bang.

Vladimir Lenin:

• It is not the chicken's road. It is the PEOPLE'S road!

John Lennon:

• Reality leaves a lot to the imagination, but crossing the road with your eyes closed is easy.
• You may say the chicken is a dreamer, but it's not the only one.

• I imagine that all the chickens will cross the road one day.

Ponce de Leon:

• He was seaching for the Fountain of Youth.

Alan Jay Lerner:

• Just to be on the street where she lived.
• I know how it feels to have wings on your heels and to fly down the street in a trance. He flew down the street on the chance they'd meet and they met not really by chance.

Michael Lerner:

• When I was the leading chicken's rights activist in the 60's, I actively studied the question. In the politics of meaning, no chickens will have to cross the road if they don't want to...

Mary Kay LeTourneau:

• To teach a young cock a lesson.

David Letterman:

• And the No. 1 reason - fricassee!
• The ten top reasons the chicken crossed the road:
  10. She was no longer a spring chicken
  9. To avoid Col. Saunders.
  8. To meet a fine feathered friend.
  7. She was going to a hen party.
  6. There was a fowl smell present.
  5. To go to mass, he was a fryer.
  4. To visit a duck who was a little down in the mouth.
  3. The radio announced there was a foul ball in Yankee Stadium.
  2. One word, fricassee!
  And the number one reason the chicken crossed the road:
  1. He heard Disney was casting for its new cartoon version of Kafka's "The Metamorphosis."

Levinas:

• [Answer completely unintelligible]

Kurt Lewin:

• Because it is a part of his life space.

Monica Lewinski:

• She saw an open zip on the other side that she couldn't resist.
• She had been offered a missionary position, so she came across to get a head of the leader.
• For a million bucks I'll tell you!

Jerry Lewis:

• For my kids.

Rush Limbaugh:

• Because of those damn bleeding heart liberals, trying to save one stupid bird while thousands of jobs are being lost.
• It was having more fun than a chicken should be allowed to have!

Limerick:

• There was a young chicken of Niger,
  Who went across the road on a tiger,
  They returned from the ride
  With the chicken inside
  And a smile on the face of the tiger.

Abraham Lincoln:

• Four score and seven eggs ago, our forefeathers crossed this road.
• We cannot dedicate - we cannot consecrate - we cannot hallow - this road. The brave chickens, living and dead, who crossed here have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.
• We highly resolve that this chicken shall have not crossed in vain, but that this nation, under God, shall have a new freedom and this nation shall not perish from the earth.

Dave Lister:

• Because of the smegging space corps directives.

Chicken Little:

• The sky fell.

John Locke:

• Because he was exercising his natural right to liberty.

Logan (Law and Order):

• To buy a plaid tie.

Vince Lombardi:

• To cross is not the important thing, it is the only thing.

Jack London:

• To answer the call of the wild.

Lazarus Long:

• Being adventurous is inborn; being complacent is a learned perversity. No resemblance--

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

• To be bold. Deeds are better things than words. Actions mightier than boastings.

Lot:

• I told her not to look back.

H.P. Lovecraft:

• To futilely attempt escape from the dark powers which even then pursued it, hungering after the stuff of its soul!
• To escape the eldritch, cthonic, rugose, polypous, indescribably horrible abomination not from our space-time continuum.
• 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.

Richard Lowe (All Black rugby player suspended for eye gouging):

• I didn't do anything to the chicken.

George Lucas:

• Because the Force was with it.
• You'll have to wait for the next set of movies, 1-3, to find out the real reason why the chicken crossed. The whole point of the current releases, 4-6, is the story of the chicken's redemption crossing.
• I originally planned to have a chicken army attack the Stormtroopers on Endor, but the AT-AT walkers kept squishing them
• The first chicken crossing scene was under budget and rushed, so I've used ILM's digital editors to add several more cars and also a school bus, which has nothing to do with story, but I thought looked really cool. The sound effects have been bolstered by the folks at my THX studio, and now, for the first time, you can hear the chicken scream, even though chickens don't really scream, but the sound, I find, helps set the tone of the scene. The chicken itself has been recreated from old footage. We had to edit out the original road and replace it with an updated digital road. It looks nothing like the other roads in the film, but that's okay because I wanted to show the hustle and bustle of a real superhighway, full of the action and of the grand scale that the fans really deserve. The chicken's blaster effects have been improved; now you can clearly see that the Dodge shoots first, making the chicken look less like a cold-blooded killer. That the Dodge missed by about seven feet, even though they were only a lane apart, and that the Dodge had the draw and plenty of time to aim, merely demonstrates the chicken's skill. All in all, the scene is about ten minutes longer, which is still shorter than I originally envisioned, but I felt that adding any more might break the flow of the story. Now the fans can see the chicken cross the road the way it was meant to be seen, on the big screen.

Cool Hand Luke:

• What we have here is a failure to communicate.

Martin Luther:

• It is a matter of faith not reason.

Lwaxana (Star Trek):

• Oh, Jean-Luc!
• Oh, Odo!

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