81 Practice Impromptu Topics (#2)

Here’s our second list of impromptu topics. Competitors can head to our generator and have it randomly select topics for practice, and clubs can use the list to demo up to three speech rounds. These topics are also combined with others in the vault. Each round has a common theme, and each speaker is given a range of topics intended to include an easy and a difficult choice.

Round 1: Bob Dylan Quotes

Speaker 1

He not busy being born is busy dying. - Bob Dylan
You could have done better, but I don’t mind. - Bob Dylan
You are a walking antique. - Bob Dylan

Speaker 2

Her profession’s her religion. - Bob Dylan
Well I’m livin’ in a foreign country but I’m bound to cross the line. - Bob Dylan
To her, death is quite romantic.- Bob Dylan

Speaker 3

You say you never compromise. - Bob Dylan
Her sin is her lifelessness. - Bob Dylan
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin’. - Bob Dylan

Speaker 4

I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken. - Bob Dylan
You shouldn’t let other people get your kicks for you. - Bob Dylan
I live in another world where life and death are memorized. - Bob Dylan

Speaker 5

People tell me it’s a sin to know and feel too much within. - Bob Dylan
I know it looks like I’m movin’ but I’m standin’ still. - Bob Dylan
I can’t even remember what it was I came here to get away from. - Bob Dylan

Speaker 6

You can always come back but you can’t come back all the way. - Bob Dylan
The emptiness is endless cold as the clay. - Bob Dylan
How many times can a man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn’t see? - Bob Dylan

Speaker 7

How many ears must one man have before he can hear people cry? - Bob Dylan
I’m ready to go anywhere. I’m ready for it to fade. - Bob Dylan
Well it may be the devil or it may be the Lord but you’re gonna have to serve somebody. - Bob Dylan

Speaker 8

Papa’s bank book wasn’t big enough. - Bob Dylan
Early one mornin’, the sun was shinin’, I was layin’ in bed wondrin’ if she’d changed at all. - Bob Dylan
But all the while I was alone, the past was close behind. - Bob Dylan

Speaker 9

I thought you’d never say hello, she said, you look like the silent type. - Bob Dylan
The only thing I knew how to do was to keep on keepin’ on. - Bob Dylan
All the people we used to know, they’re an illusion to me now. - Bob Dylan

Round 2: Thomas Merton Quotes

Speaker 1

Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time. - Thomas Merton
But there is greater comfort in the substance of silence than in the answer to a question. - Thomas Merton
We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone. We find it with another. - Thomas Merton

Speaker 2

If a man is to live, he must be all alive, body, soul, mind, heart, spirit. - Thomas Merton
Anxiety is the mark of spiritual insecurity. -Thomas Merton
Our idea of God tells us more about ourselves than about Him. - Thomas Merton

Speaker 3

Love, therefore, is its own reward. - Thomas Merton
Solitude is a way to defend the spirit against the murderous din of our materialism. - Thomas Merton
A man knows when he has found his vocation when he stops thinking about how to live and begins to live. - Thomas Merton

Speaker 4

Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult sacrifice. - Thomas Merton
Souls are like athletes that need opponents worthy of them if they are to be tried and extended and pushed to the full use of their powers and rewarded according to their capacity. - Thomas Merton
The biggest human temptation is to settle for too little. - Thomas Merton

Speaker 5

What we have to be is what we are. -Thomas Merton
Without the alternation of sound and silence, there would be no rhythm. - Thomas Merton
When you expect the world to end at any moment, you know there is no need to hurry. - Thomas Merton

Speaker 6

Despair is the absolute extreme of self-love. - Thomas Merton
The least of learning is done in the classrooms. - Thomas Merton
The deepest level of communication is not communication but communion. - Thomas Merton

Speaker 7

Hurry ruins saints as well as artists. - Thomas Merton
Violence is not completely fatal until it ceases to disturb us. - Thomas Merton
The solution of the problem of life is life itself. - Thomas Merton

Speaker 8

A man who fails well is greater than one who succeeds badly. - Thomas Merton
The end of the world will be legal. - Thomas Merton
Whose silence are you? - Thomas Merton

Speaker 9

Prayer and love are learned in the hour when prayer becomes impossible and the heart has turned to stone. - Thomas Merton
You are made in the image of what you desire. - Thomas Merton
We have what we seek. - Thomas Merton

Round 3: Single Words

Speaker 1

Trophy
Blanket
Homeless

Speaker 2

Capital
Minimum
Social

Speaker 3

Pants
Represent
Environment

Speaker 4

Socks
Kindness
Cognition

Speaker 5

Blurry
Watching
Theater

Speaker 6

Mountain
Motivation
Soft

Speaker 7

Poster
Toothless
Pizza

Speaker 8

Power
Rolling
Joy

Speaker 9

Trees
Eagle
Toe