It's a great quote, but I don't think it's really true. I didn't give a shit about networking, and I don't have a way to contact most of the people I've worked with in the past. I'm sure I could get some good referrals through many of those people, but since I didn't give a shit, I can't and I don't think that's really doing networking well.

This worked out fine for me, some people who are better at networking than me reached out to me when they had interesting work at a good time, but 'do whatever and hopefully someone will find a job for you' is pretty bad advice too.

You've got to give some minimal level of shit, or you end up with a potential network instead of a network. I don't think going to 'networking events' is required; those always seem fishy, if your only connection is you wanted to make a connection, it's not a strong connection ... and probably the people going to these things don't have a very strong network or they wouldn't be going, so you're not getting much from the multiple hop networking either. There's probably exceptions, but trying to catch em all is not the right game.