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In The Media

It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies and nosers-out of unorthodoxy

by Larry Chiang on February 22, 2026


The most well-known quote from George Orwell’s *1984* that directly references young women (in the thoughts of the protagonist Winston Smith) is this passage:
> “He disliked nearly all women, and especially the young and pretty ones. **It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies and nosers-out of unorthodoxy.**”
This appears early in the novel (Part 1, Chapter 1), as Winston reflects on Julia (the “bold-looking girl” he initially suspects and resents) and his broader attitudes toward women in the Party’s society.
A slightly shorter, commonly shared version focuses on the key sentence:
> “It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies and nosers-out of unorthodoxy.”
This line reflects Winston’s cynical, misogynistic perspective on how the totalitarian regime fosters fanaticism, particularly among younger women involved in groups like the Junior Anti-Sex League. (Note that the novel portrays this as Winston’s biased viewpoint rather than an objective fact, and later developments with Julia complicate or challenge it.)
Other mentions of young women/girls in *1984* tend to be more descriptive or incidental (e.g., references to prole women, children in the Spies, or Julia herself), but this is the primary quote people associate with the theme.

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