it is through exchange that difference becomes a blessing, not a curse

From the Quote of the Day of the Austrian Economists:

A primordial instinct going back to humanity's tribal past makes us see difference as a threat. That instinct is massively dysfunctional in an age in which our several destinies are interlinked. Oddly enough, it is the market -- the least overtly spiritual of concepts -- that delivers a profoundly spiritual message: that it is through exchange that difference becomes a blessing, not a curse. When difference leads to war, both sides lose. When it leads to mutual enrichment, both sides gain.

Steven Horwitz, "Comparative Advantage", in the Fraser Institute's website:

.... once one understands the concept of comparative advantage, one can see how economics helps us to reveal perhaps the most important benefit of diversity: when people are free to produce by comparative advantage and then trade what they produce, human diversity becomes a source of both increased material well-being and expanded peaceful human cooperation. The more freedom we give to people to engage in the market process, the more that diversity and difference really do become humanity’s blessing and not its curse.