With many in need of some motivation to kick start the New Year after a difficult 2020 and what seems set to be a tough winter, PureGym has revealed the most motivational movie scenes of all time, to help give everyone a boost of inspiration as we head into 2021.
Focusing on motivational speeches and dialogue delivered by characters in more than 50 classic movies, the ‘Dreams’ scene from 2006’s The Pursuit of Happyness came out as the most popular.
With Will Smith’s character Chris telling his son that “If you want something, go get it”, and not to “ever let somebody tell you, you can’t do something”. Timeless advice we all need to remind ourselves of at times, an overwhelming 99.01% of viewer reactions to the scene were found to be positive.
To reach the final rankings, PureGym looked at the amount of likes vs. dislikes of videos of each scene featured on YouTube, to provide a greater idea of whether people drew inspiration from the dialogue, rather than simply how many have watched it.
The 10 Most Motivational Movie Speeches Ever
| FILM | THE SPEECH | NUMBER OF POSITIVE REACTIONS |
| 1. Pursuit of Happyness (2006) | ‘Dream’ | 99.01% |
| 2. Rocky Balboa (2006) | ‘It Ain’t How Hard you Hit’ | 98.81% |
| 3. Coach Carter (2005) | ‘Our Deepest Fear’ | 98.63% |
| 4. Facing the Giants (2006) | ‘The Death Crawl’ | 98.38% |
| 5. The Shawshank Redemption (1994) | ‘Get Busy Living’ | 98.05% |
| 6. Gridiron Gang (2006) | ‘We are Special’ | 97.80% |
| 7. Friday Night Lights (2004) | ‘Being Perfect’ | 97.52% |
| 8. Any Given Sunday (1999) | ‘Inch by Inch’ | 97.505 |
| 9. Gladiator (2000) | ‘My Name is Maximus’ | 97.49% |
| 10. Cool Runnings (1993) | ‘I See Pride’ | 97.47% |
Beyond The Pursuit of Happyness, the mid-00’s were revealed to be a particularly good time for movie-based motivation, with 6 of the top 10 released between 2004-2006.
This included the classic ‘It ain’t about how hard you hit’ scene from Rocky Balboa, and the much-loved ‘our deepest fear’ speech in Coach Carter.
In addition to providing a hit of motivation with their film-based findings, PureGym are also aiming to help anyone keep fit in 2021, regardless of whether their local gym has been forced to close, as they’ve made their fitness app completely free for anyone to download.
Previously, the app and its 400+ workouts were only available to members paying approximately £19.99 a month.
Stephen Rowe, Chief Marketing Officer of PureGym says: “After what’s been an extremely difficult year that will certainly leave a hangover into 2021, many of us are going to be in need of a boost to try and kick start our goals.
Many of these goals at this time of year are focused on improving health and wellbeing, and while a movie can’t solve everything, we hope that some of the scenes highlighted in our rankings can provide that hit of motivation to get going.
If these movies have got you motivated, but are finding yourself frustrated by gym closures, our free app provides a great warm-up for when gyms reopen, no matter the tier or lockdown restrictions you might find yourself in, which is why we’ve made it and its vast amount of workouts free for anyone”.
To watch some of the inspirational scenes and for more information on the full study, visit: https://www.puregym.com/blog/best-motivational-speeches/