James Hay may refer to:
- James Hay (bishop) (died 1538), Scottish abbot and bishop
- James Hay, 1st Earl of Carlisle (c. 1580–1636), British aristocrat
- James Hay, 2nd Earl of Carlisle (1612–1660)
- James Hay, 15th Earl of Erroll (1726–1778)
- James Hay, Lord Hay (1797–1815), British aristocrat and soldier
- James Hay (politician) (1856–1931), U.S. Representative from Virginia
- James Hay (footballer 1876) (1876–?), footballer for Barnsley, Chesterfield Town and Stoke
- James Grant Hay (born 1969), Australian television advertising entrepreneur, writer and film producer
- Jim Hay (born 1931), ice hockey player
- Jimmy Hay (1881–1940), Scottish football player
- Sir James Shaw Hay, Governor of Gambia, Sierra Leone and the Bahamas
Famous quotes containing the words james and/or hay:
“This comes of James teaching me to think for myself, and never to hold back out of fear of what other people may think of me. It works beautifully as long as I think the same things as he does.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“The symbol of perpetual youth, the grass-blade, like a long green ribbon, streams from the sod into the summer, checked indeed by the frost, but anon pushing on again, lifting its spear of last year’s hay with the fresh life below. It grows as steadily as the rill oozes out of the ground.... So our human life but dies down to its root, and still puts forth its green blade to eternity.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)