What he said is, if you dont create tests first, refactoring is just changing shit. The behavior is supposed to be invariant across refactoring. The only way you can be sure is to test the before and after.
Moving from C to Java you really appreciate tools like IntelliJ and Eclipse which can automate some refactorings with a fairly high amount of certainty that it's not going to change the behaviour.
Enough certainty that you won't want to test it?
For example, they might make mistakes, like changing only the code references and not the comments; or be mildly annoying by screwing up indentation.
I feel better being forced to visit every line, to see the whole scope of the change and realize just what it's doing to the code. Occasionally, this has made me realize that the refactor is not even the right thing to do. Also, it is one of the few chances I have to force myself to read code that I don't visit often; it can result in me writing down a few other things to go back and fix later (a mini-code-review, basically).