Listing in reference section, but not quoting Can we list papers/Journals in reference section, but do not quote them in thesis. It may happen that I read some papers which are close to my area of work, but I may not use any idea from that paper. So in such case, I may not quote anything from that paper. But since I have read that paper, can I list that paper in reference section?
Many journals require you to reference every entry in your list of references somewhere in the paper. That is probably also a good rule of thumb for a thesis.

The reason for this rule is that people do not typically just read through the list of references by itself. They read through the text, and in places where another publication is referenced, they will look it up in the list of references at the end. If the list of references contains entries that are not in fact referenced anywhere in the text, nobody is likely to ever look at that entry. 

In practice, if you think that a paper is relevant for your thesis, then there ought to be a place in your text where you should cite it. If you cannot find a place where it would be worthwhile to cite it, then the paper is likely not relevant.