Говори и пиши как The Eсonomist

Some call them the "six-pack". Ever since Bosnia's election in Oc­tober 2010 the country has been waiting for the leaders of the six main parties — two Serbs, two Croats and two Bosniaks — to form a government.

Palestinian obligations were "musts" while Israeli ones "shoulds".

Ouagadougu, capital of Burkina Faso — "where people get honor and respect".

It was Barry Goldwater, a Republican politician, who pointed out that to serve in the armed forces, you don't have to be straight. You only have to shoot straight.

Parisians, the car dealers say, turn out to be the ones who are keenest to hide their origins — perhaps to protect their cars from casual vandalism when motoring on holiday, prompted by their reputation for haughty arrogance.

Adam Smith's first book, "The Theory of Moral Sentiments", "turned the tables" on Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who believed that society enslaved man to vanity and ambition. Smith argued, instead, that society taught man to be good. This tuition started from man's capacity for "sympathy": his ability to feel what another man feels. It continued with his capacity for sympathy squared: his ability to sense what other men feel about him, putting himself in the shoes of other men putting themselves in his shoes.

Perhaps people feel little need for corporate social responsibility when the government cares for them from cradle to grave.

Frankin D. Roosevelt did not have much time for Burma or the Burmese. The sympathy he felt for Indian demands for independence from Britain did not extend to that other piece of the British Raj now known as My- anmar. In 1942 he wrote to Winston Churchill: "I wish you could put the whole bunch of them into a frying pan with a wall around it and let them stew in their own juice."

The brass-hats should be answerable to the government.

One of America's most admirable characteristics is its belief that it has a duty of moral leadership.

The incumbent Mayor of London Boris Johnson, who is known for his chaotic charisma, has run the city competently enough.

One popular revival is the notion of tianxia, or "all under heaven". This dates back to the golden age of classical Chinese philosophy — of Con­fucius, Mencius, Laozi and the rest — in the "warring states" period be­fore China's unification in 221BC under the first Qin emperor. Tianxia is widely understood as a unified world dominated by one country (call it the "middle kingdom", perhaps), to which neighbours and those beyond look for guidance and pay tribute.

The representative for Long Island has approached this most sen­sitive of subjects with the delicacy of a steamroller.

The Lebanese would be rich indeed if they had a pound every time their country had been described as "on the brink" of violent collapse.

Osama bin Laden built the brand and turned it into a global fran­chise; his face advertised it, even as he disappeared.

Only after Mossadeq's ejection was the shah able to become a high- octane dictator.

Mr Bush's victory shows how much power a president has in wartime, even a deeply unpopular president fighting a deeply unpopular war.

Once installed in the presidential palace, he may find it much harder to continue to be all things to all men.

Demography is like a supertanker; it takes decades to turn around. It will pose some of China's biggest problems.

If people are bad at recalling their feelings, they are worse at predicting them.

The government owns 30% of Eni, and seems happy with its strat­egy. Of Eni's current board of nine, six are government appointees, described as independent; three of them are directors of compa­nies in the business empire of Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's prime min­ister, and a fourth is a politician of the Northern League, a partner in Italy's governing coalition. Mr Scaroni, in turn, is a longstanding shareholder of Mr Berlusconi's AC Milan football club.

The Greek finance minister, George Papaconstantinou, must feel like a man who finds a one-euro coin on the pavement only to discover he had earlier dropped a five-euro note.

Merkel is a cautious consensus builder.

McCain has legendary volcanic temper who is a serial erupter.

North Korea is unique among communist countries in having what amounts to a royal family. The current dictator, Kim Jong Il, inherited power from his father, Kim Il Sung. The personality cult extends not only to them, but to Kim senior's mother, Kang Ban Suk ("mother of Korea"), to his first wife, Kim Chong Suk ("mother of revolution"), and to his brother, Kim Chol Ju ("the revolutionary fighter").

He also wants to cut the number of agencies run by the state from 1,000 to around 800 and to consolidate the New York state's astonishing 10,000 local governments.

Republicans are a party of white-trash pride.

It is one thing to be independent of politicians but quite another to have discussions with them in a crisis.

They have a policy of blaming the previous government. But they don't seem to realise that, after 11 years in power, they are the previous government.