In my experience, though, the statement is largely true for refactorings. Even in a language like Java that doesn't have a very expressive type system, if I need to change the structure of my classes, rename some stuff, etc., just knowing that it compiles tells you that you probably didn't break anything.

Of course, once you add / change logic, I agree with your assessment that the statement is hopelessly naïve in most practical use cases.