People will forget what you said. People will forget what you did. But people will never forget how you made them feel.

The saying emphasizes that emotional impact outlasts specific words or actions. It suggests that memory is less a factual record than an affective one: people may lose track of details, but they retain the felt sense of being respected, shamed, comforted, or diminished. As guidance for ethical conduct, it shifts attention from performance and rhetoric to empathy and relational responsibility—how one’s presence lands on others. The quote’s popularity reflects a modern emphasis on emotional intelligence and interpersonal care, framing kindness and consideration not as sentimentality but as the most durable form of influence.